'Knowing deep down' or 'at an emotional level' is a common colloquialism but it seems to reifying a sort of compartmentalized cognition where there are multiple cognizers within and individual knowing different things and not communicating, which I don't buy.

We know they know we're right, though, because they'll tell us when our ideas are separated from the material changes that are required to implement them. Ask a lib what they think of:

• Universal healthcare
• Public education
• Mass incarceration
• Rights to basics like food and housing
• Wars of aggression

You're probably going to get supermajorities on roughly the same page as us, at least when they're speaking in the abstract. They do value many of the things we do.

The problem, of course, is when someone whispers "property values" or "the price of gas" in their ear. Suddenly all those good intentions vanish because it could conceivably be a threat to their own material conditions. We know they know that's wrong, too, because libs lionize people who put what's right over what's profitable.