I can affirm this with experience. My own personal hope is that because the American communist movement is just being resparked that it's simply smouldering in the kindling right now before really catching fire. which unlike a nice campfire, can take months to years to actually see results.

That said, like you've mentioned, having kindling catching fire - growing a connection to your community - is something I do notice is the biggest shortfall of the many communist parties in the United States. I also say that with the caveat that I'm aware that a lot of the actual groundwork of building connections tends to be more clandestine, interpersonal, and quite dull, so it usually goes unnoticed and unrecognized, so outside of my direct circles of knowledge and into the whispering void, I do know that this is occuring at a crawling pace in the U.S. So it'd be best to probably get used to seeing what we're seeing now for a decent while, or not seeing in this case.

Quite frankly I'm of the opinion we need more nose-to-the-grindstone communists, something I try to strive to be myself and help others I know work towards as well.