A Marxist perspective would be that mass movements and unionization are the real mechanisms by which ordinary people can wield power. The main reason to engage in electoral politics is because it's what people are invested in and pay attention to, and so it can serve as an avenue to promote a message, but one should not expect to actually produce significant results through bourgeois elections.

Unions in the US are (like the other user said) rare, weak, and often lack solidarity and clarity of vision. But there are new ones popping up and they are gradually gaining in strength. New unions like the ones at Amazon and Starbucks seem to have younger, more energized leadership.

A lot of the problems unions have go back to red scares. Things like, representing newer members and not just seniority, standing together and cooperating with other unions across different industries, trying to make sure the union is welcoming and accommodating to everyone - those sorts of things would get you branded as a communist, whether it was true or not. Way back in the New Deal era, unions got carrots as well as sticks to go in that direction, and then as they became weaker, by the 80's, carrots got a lot more scarce. And so over the past century they were dismantled.

But young people find themselves in this capitalist hellscape and are recognizing the need to organize and stick together and leaving a lot of that baggage behind and starting from scratch. At the same time, it's important to learn from the mistakes of the past, like kicking the commies out of the AFL/CIO in the hopes that the government would see it as a sign of good faith and protect the union's interests. At the end of the day, they're going to pursue their own interests and appeasement doesn't work, especially when it undermines the union's own strength. A new, more inclusive and clear-sighted wave of unionization is our best chance of getting anywhere.