A majority of Americans seem to agree that the Federal government is not working for the benefit of their individual households
The conservative lens focuses entirely on the middle of the sentence ("the federal government is not working"), and the result is the dismantling of the federal apparatus. I think the most important part, in terms of understanding the American electorate, is actually the last ("is not working for the benefit of their individual households"). And the discrepancy there is exactly the thing to focus on.
Centering the entire solution around the middle part skips over something that is true: a majority of Americans
want to feel that the federal government is in some way working for the benefit of their household.
They want this because although...
the left has spent the last 20 years identifying the problem (roughly) as “Capitalism has never worked for minority groups and it’s up to the Federal government to fix that.”
....is a conservative framing of a liberal ideal, the actual proposal you are referring to is quite popular. It goes:
"Capitalism is a system that naturally exacerbates social and economic inequities. Therefore, inequity supports are an essential service of government."
Individual programs and policies are just sub-conversations of that idea. "How does this exacerbation of inequities affect farmers? What about farmers in specific geographical areas? How does it affect the learning outcomes of children below the poverty line? What can we do about that?" Etc.
But the fact of the matter is, the maintaining of relief programs to balance capitalistic inequities is incredibly popular. The big picture is popular. Unemployment. Supplemental Nutrition. Housing assistance. The ACA. SNAP. Rural development programs. Social Security. Medicaid.
Creating a solution that only hears the middle of the sentence ("the federal government is not working") instead of the rest ("is not working for the benefit of their individual household") misunderstands what people want. And as a result, it mistakes "the system currently isn't working for me" for "tear it all down, I don't want it to work."
Think back to the public reaction to the ACA repeal. The entire Republican logic was, "the ACA polls VERY poorly right now, so this is a good time for us to dismantle it."
It turned out people didn't want it dismantled at allllll. They had specific grievances, and they wanted specific solutions. And the reason Republicans didn't see that...the reason they didn't see that the conversation was one that centered around improvement solutions rather than dismantling...was that they interpreted the situation through the lens of their own internal conservative skew. THEY didn't like the ACA, and THEY wanted it gone...so it never occurred to them that other people wouldn't jump to the same conclusion.
