I think you’re vastly overestimating the average voter. I would recommend reading Caplan’s “The Myth of the Rational Voter”; it’s a rather bracing book.
> Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand.
It feels like it's denying the two-way relation between voters and politicians, and in particular the influence of political actors on voter views.
Or from the conclusion
> recommending that democracies do less and let markets take up the slack.
At least we know what we're in for.
This is, of course, why the US constitution originally restricted the franchise rather quite a bit. Are you in favor of that then?