the völkisch movement was based on pretty much this same line of cant 
There’s no statistical rigor to Ruffini’s use of the “average American.” Clear majorities favor progressive positions pretty much across the board, from health care to reproductive rights to the minimum wage. But he’s not using the term in a statistical sense.
In a time when Rs lose national popular votes by millions but still prevail in attaining power, they have to reframe the justification for that power as flowing from some authentically conservative ‘heartland’ people. That’s his “average American.”
The average American is a mythical person, fundamental to the land, whose simple moods and passions Ruffini and his copartisans are entitled to guide. It’s who is wholly unlike the “elite ghetto” of academics and tech and media people that says he shouldn’t get his way.
