If you have 1/5 of a country marching in the same direction and prepared to use force that's an incredible amount of political power - the rest of the country (and we've seen this time and time again in numerous countries) will just fall into line.

The last thing the commies want is to awake that "1/5th", because if they mobilise, they'll push the commies into the sea and who knows what'll happen from there. They'd rather just have Americans sleepwalk into socialism.