Fact is, the structural reality of Democrat political campaigns does
not allow for any more political education than that. The aim of
political campaigns and their affiliated non-partisan voter registration
and education projects is to get that big base vote out, and to let
people go home to be spectators again after the election. Democratic
party honchos allow, even encourage activists to make promises about
ongoing mobilizations after election day to enforce “accountability” to
the grassroots, promises which Democrat higher-ups know perfectly well
will not be kept. The activists have no organizational resources to fund
ongoing grassroots mobilizations, and the Democratic party has no
machinery whatsoever to translate the wishes of its base voters or the
grassroots activists who mobilize them into policy.
Tens of thousands of grassroots activists stumped for Barack Obama in
2007 and 2008 hoping they’d see single payer health care enacted. The
campaign’s official body, Obama For America was to hold a series of
electronically linked local meetings across the country following the
new president’s inauguration. But when many of the OFA meetings trended
toward demanding Medicare For All, subsequent meetings were called off,
and OFA was mothballed. Democrat activists pushing for single payer, for
reining in the energy companies, for justice at home and peace abroad
were locked out till their pimps needed them for the next election in
2012. That’s a big part of why Democrat turnout was down in 2010 and
Democrats lost both houses of Congress.
-- Bruce A. Dixon, "Democrats Prepare to Pimp the Left in 2018 and 2020" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).