Lenin argued that communists should take part in bourgeois elections because this will get them tribune to loudly proclaim their program, though this should be the least they do, not the most and the main effort should be outside of electorial politics and on organising working class.

Now thing is, when Lenin wrote this, he meant the tsarist duma, which was even fakier democracy than the current American one, with 3 tiers of electors, censuses, workers and peasants barely getting few % of representation and rest going to landowners and their pets, okhrana secret police arresting socialists and peasant activists and closing their newspapers (there was a case where huge participation of workers put iirc 15 worker representatives in duma, and tsar just fucking imprisoned them). But they were still heard.

Now, nearly 120 years later, bourgeosie don't even have to be so heavy handed, they just drown the communist message in a media flood, and even cases like removing third party candidate from ballot and deplatforming them cause no big response from the so called "liberty" advocates.