Your job is to save the USA WITHOUT destroying capitalism. What would you do? What can you do? Basically—how can you make things like they were during Obama’s presidency?
As a lib my first thought would be: “implement universal health care.” But wouldn’t it be struck down immediately by the SCOTUS? Wouldn’t the health insurance companies just overthrow you? Won’t the corporate press immediately start treating you like Bernie (or even worse) in order to turn the populace against you?
Please discuss. Also I am not Biden looking for ideas. Nor do I work in the White House.
All they have to do is fund public work projects without subcontracting to a million leeches. Actually build infrastructure and build an agency of some sort to do it. Corporate interests and segments of the media would turn against you, but a popular president can weather that if they provide material improvement to people's lives. Our current structure is incapable of even basic Keynesian economics, but if you call infrastructure building "emergency defense spending to secure our supply chain and infrastructure from Chinese attacks" you could force it through with executive orders. A truly cynical take would be to manufacture consent that China or Russia are directly threatening us and escalating trade war. Maybe you do a false flag cyber attack on an electrical grid, then you can sell the public on anything.
This wouldn't save capitalism permanently since it's built on contradictions, but you could provide treats to keep it humming for a decade. Americans are so starved for any good, that a president who did what I outline would be immensely popular even if mainstream media was calling him an authoritarian communist.
Best answer I’ve seen so far. The only way you can convince enough Americans to support you is to dial up the xenophobia. And this is actually what many presidents already do. (Is Obama the only recent exception?) Except they just dial up the xenophobia for support; they don’t actually use that support to improve anything. One side effect is pogroms against anyone who looks even vaguely Asian.
I’ll pass this one up to Joe.
The other thing I'd add is some sort of direct cash payment to Americans a la covidbux. Not something that would be regular since again the rest of the government would stop it, but something close to W Bush's rhetoric on early tax returns after 9/11. People need money in their pocket for capitalism to run.