Do political parties focus on influencing policies

No, they don't.

Explanation:

Political parties generally only focused on maintaining total votes to hold or improve their position. Influencing policies are most commonly done by Political Action Committee (PAC).

PAC is a group that commonly consist of people from the private sectors. (such as activists, business representative, etc). PAC usually funded several political candidates in order to influence the creation of a certain policy. The policies supported by PAC generally only benefited the members of the PAC rather than the citizens as a whole.

the deaths of over a million communist soldiers

post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans

possession of power

exercising of power

class and power