Yes, Democrats don’t know how politics works, they ask Republicans to decide which issues are important, and then argue a slightly more moderate response to those issues is best. Sometimes they accidentally win doing that, if the economy is good and people are happy with moderation, but that’s probably not going to be true any time soon.
It’s both. Many, many issues have 15 people who can explain what they don’t like and try to do something about it, and then 15 million people who don’t like the same thing but can’t explain it, won’t try, only vote when they feel like it, and will never see any scolding you try to do.