I don’t think you’re wrong, what I think is that this is exactly the problem. On every actually important topic, what are any candidate’s options here? Be vocal and get destroyed by the establishment immediately? Keep quiet and wait for an opportunity to fix things later, that will never ever come? Keep quiet for so long that you get your brain scrambled by “working within the system” and lose every ideal you ever held?  From precedent those sure seem like the only things that ever happen. If there are no options that actually work at all, then I’ll at least prefer the candidate who will say “genocide bad”.

Electoralism is a bandaid solution at best in the first place, but the bandaid isn’t even effective if you just play ball. Assume every last politician is suspect, demand the moon, brook no compromise, terrorize whoever happens to be in office into submission. FDR didn’t do the New Deal because he believed in it, he did it as a milquetoast compromise to an organized, insistent, threatening populace.

At least that’s what I think, anyway… This sort of thing.