How can the Democrats be the chemo when they enabled Trump and Republicans?

I think that your point has gotten a bit lost in the analogy for me. Like if we’re saying that the Democrats are like chemotherapy — unpleasant but necessary — in your view, what does this mean for the potential split caused by Mamdani winning the nomination and many establishment Dems seeming to have a problem with this? You seem frustrated at some of the comments in this thread, but it’s not clear to me what your issue is in particular, or what you think is the best course of action with respect to the upcoming mayoral election.

For what it’s worth, I like your analogy, and how you frame it; I think that with some refinement or clarification, it could be an effective way to deliver your point

Continuing your metaphor…

You have to survive chemo in order for it to kill the cancer. It’s equally killing you, you’re just hoping it kills the cancer before you die and then you’re praying you’re still strong enough to recover. Many people don’t, especially if they start from a compromised position, which we are.

I think relying on chemo alone here will ultimately end poorly. People need to be looking for other solutions and advocating LOUDLY about the negative effects that chemo is having if they hope to survive it.

And certainly ignoring the dangers of chemo and not trying to care for the damages it’s causing, is a sure fire way to die. You’re just speeding up the process of death, which I think is exactly what we’ve been watching with the Democratic Party since the end of Trump’s last term and even before.

We need alternative therapies, you can advocate for conjunctive therapies but arguing to just rely on chemo at this stage is political suicide. We’re not going to make it. And those stuck in their traditional, conservative and tribalism thinking are only speeding up the process of organ failure.

We need to be proactively looking for solutions, not relying on “it’s the best we’ve got”. We have to fight cancer. And that requires a whole approach not a single, potentially lethal, method road-blocking all others.

(PS— if anything the Dems should be learning that if they refuse to accept a shift to the left in candidates and policy (Bernie, Mamdani and socialist democrats etc.) they’re done. Not that voters have to turn into republicans because we’re too stupid to do anything else.)

no, you are wrong because you are looking at this problem using the wrong framework. no, MAGA is not cancer. MAGA is a symptom of cancer, but it’s not cancer itself. Democrats aren’t chemotherapy, in fact I would argue they are a symptom of cancer too. maybe not as pronounced, not as painful, but a symptom nonetheless.

what’s the cancer then? well, it’s the broken electoral system, it’s the two-party system that forces people to vote for the lesser of two evils. but most importantly, it’s the late stage capitalism. if we don’t get that sorted, America is facing an eventual collapse. whether Trump had won 2024 or not, that only changes how fast the cancer progresses. you are too short-sighted - 4 years don’t really matter! if we don’t actually start fighting the real cancer, in 50 years, or maybe 100, the United State of America will collapse.

This person and his rhetoric are why we only get to choose politicians that fight for the ruling class.

He’s part of the two-pronged strategy, and the disparity in wealth will not decrease until there are fewer people like him.

What you’re missing is that the drug you’re injecting that’s labeled “chemotherapy” might actually be a mislabeled carcinogen that will accelerate the cancer.

Politicians lie. They even lie about what party they belong to. What’s a power-hungry Republican to do if they happen to live in a solidly blue state? You can’t get elected being yourself. So instead you lie. You pretend to be a Democrat and actively lie to the voters. You join a party that you share few values with.

Once elected, you do everything possible to destroy the party from within. After all, you would prefer to be able to run openly as a Republican. You want Democrats to be electorally unpopular. So you do everything you can to make the Democratic brand as toxic as possible.

The critical failure of “blue no matter who” is that labels often lie. You may think you’re voting for a Democrat, but you’re actually voting for a Republican. And once that fake Democrat has been elected to a safe blue seat, they’ll be nearly impossible to remove due to incumbency advantage. If a fake Democrat gets the presidential nomination and wins in 2028, we’re guaranteed Republican rule until at least 2036. The 2032 election will be a contest between that fake Democrat and an open Republican; one of the two will win. By voting for the fake Democrat, you guarantee 8 years of Republican rule. If the base stayed home and refused to vote for the fake, at least there would be some nonzero chance of a non-Republican winning in 2032.

The fatal flaw of your strategy is that you assume labels mean anything. There is in fact nothing preventing people from simply lying about which party they most strongly identify with. And your voting strategy leaves you completely at the mercy of these fraudsters.

Back to your chemo example, you would be like a desperate patient randomly injecting any drug that someone told you was chemotherapy or a cure for cancer. You would be spending thousands on bogus homeopathic treatments, because, “has to be better than cancer, pick the lesser of two evils.” In the end, you actually end up dramatically shortening your life because you injected yourself with bleach, thinking that it had to be the lesser evil to the cancer.

“Vote blue no matter who” is to politics as the Steve Jobs strategy is to medicine.

In your analogy, what is the treatment for blue Maga?

There isn’t one. Because the cancer is Capitalism and it is malignant. Dems are simply a different mutation of that cancer.