When Smart People are Dumb: Kevin Drum

Kevin Drum is a smart guy, which makes what he says below earn my When Smart People Are Dumb label:

...We liberals do want to separate church and state; we do support gay rights; we do support abortion rights; etc. And this strikes a lot of rural conservatives as basically depraved. Conservative politicians and conservative media turn all this stuff into a caricature, but it’s not as if it isn’t grounded in reality.

So this leaves liberals with two alternatives. First, we can figure out a way to retain our views on social issues but convince conservative voters that they aren’t a big deal and don’t represent the fall of Western civilization.

Second, we can tone down our social views to make them more acceptable to moderate conservatives. Those are our two choices, but among the activist wing of the left we’re not really willing to pursue either one of them...

But the lunatics have always been around: the John Birch Society, the Moral Majority, the Mena airport clowns, the tea party, and today QAnon and assorted other crackpots. So forget them for the moment. The real question is: How can liberals appeal to folks who are just normal conservatives?

One way or another, the answer is that we have to make our views on social issues acceptable to them. Everything else is just so much fluff. So how do we do it?

Rob's comment:
Surprisingly stupid from Drum, or anyone else except clueless liberal ninnies. We can't "do it" by convincing "lunatics" to stop believing in crackpot religion and politics. We have to smash them at the polls, beginning in November. 

If we can't do that, we're fucked as a country and as a species. We don't deserve to survive as a species if we can't bring ourselves to prevent the crazies from driving us all off a cliff.