How to respond/reply to a reviewer who doesn't seem to "get" the paper I've receiced double-blind reviews of a paper I submitted a while ago. However, it seems that only one reviewer actually seemed to "get" the point of the paper: They showed flaws in my work but also appreciated some parts and the review was in general very helpful to me.

The others, however, complained about many things which seem nonsensical to me. For example, they complain that paper is "difficult to read" but simultaneously complain about me corroborating my empirical results with seminal studies from 20 years ago: They seem to either be  ignorant of these works and their significance or just don't understand this kind of analysis even though it's in a big section with lots of graphs (i.e. a lot of time was devoted to it)... or they just don't care enough to try to understand.

From their tone and the fact that these reviewers missed main contributions even though they were enumerated in the submission metadata, I fear that the last possibility is probably the main factor: not caring or not taking interest in the paper.

How do I address these reviews which are negative of my work but are in fact not very "good" reviews in themselves due to a lack of expertise and/or caring? The paper has not yet been either officially accepted or rejected but has very poor evaluations from all but one reviewer; There is a very short response period in which I can address the reviewers' points in writing to the reviewers themselves (I think it's to them, at least), but I'm unsure of what exactly to write to them.
If the referees -- especially more than one -- are not "getting" the paper, then there are just a few possible reasons why this can happen.  In order of least like to most likely:


The reviewers are not expert enough
The author is submitting to the wrong journal
The author is not telling the story well enough


The first is rare, but not rare enough.  The third is very common.

The proper response to the first two, but for different reasons, is to resubmit elsewhere.  For the first, you'd be looking for a journal with a better referee pool.  For the second, you're looking for a more appropriate audience.

The proper response to the the third, bluntly, is for the author to write better.