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That doesn't sound like an answer to the question I asked. As to what you said, I'm skeptical of the direction of causality you're pointing to. I don't think there's an objective standard of "racism" that the Democrats fear transgressing, it seems more that anything that goes against the Dems will be called "racist".
To answer the question, most elected Democrats are hacks who are willing to do anything for personal advancement. Elected Democrats believe, rightly or wrongly (I genuinely don't know which) that being called racist will do more damage to their personal career prospects than hurting the party.
To respond to your empirical argument about what gets people called racist, the Great Awokening was all about Democrats and other left elites calling each other racist over intra-coalition political disagreements and personal beefs. And what we saw was that elected Democrats were willing to beclown themselves and the Democratic Party rather than risk being called racist. In addition, enough people have (for reasons which may have been good back in the noughties when they started doing it) pre-committed to calling voter suppression racist that there is no DPUSA Grand Ayatollah who could turn the racism accusations off for partisan advantage. Finally, there are large parts of the Democratic base who are sufficiently rabidly partisan that they will punish elected Democrats (including by calling them racist if the opportunity arises) for voting for any GOP-proposed bill even if they would normally support it.
It has more to do with why the accusation is made in the first place.
The cry of "racism" is an argument from privilege; unpacked, it's "you can't reform away my sociopolitical power because I claim it would result in spiritual damage to a cause I am pretending to care about to gain a superior position over my peers" (whether it actually does or not is immaterial). Cries of "sexism" function the same way.
Conservative parties, which the Democrats (and Blue tribe) are [and at least the median citizen understands that more than they did 20 years ago], function solely on this kind of privilege; back when conservatism was Christian, it was the same thing- claiming something was 'unchristian' is "you can't reform away my sociopolitical power because I claim it would result in spiritual damage to a cause I pretend to a cause I am pretending to care about to gain a superior position over my peers".
Thus, "X-ism" is actually an assertion that the privilege of faction members to rent-seek without limit using the civil religion as justification is in question, and that's what a conservative/Democrat/Blue fears, because literally every part of their coalition has that trait in common.
It's also why reformers fail when they accept the conservative falsehood that honoring the moral claim of "racism" isn't the pure rent-seeking it actually is (usually through some sniveling apology; they're neither hot nor cold and thus the electorate spits them out). The correct way to deal with that as a reformer is to not even dignify it with a response.
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FTFY
I have met a lot of amateur politicians who genuinely believed in what they were doing. In my youth, I was one. We tended not to get elected. But your basic point is correct.
Among the people doing ward-level politics in the UK in the noughties, I would guess:
Maybe at the low levels, fair enough. But I have a hard time imagining that the true believers manage to reach the very top-level of politics.
I absolutely agree with you.
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