Those who are happy have more to lose from change than those who are miserable. The well-off thus tend to be harder to convince that the risk inherent in any change is worth taking.

It's often said that Black people, as a voting constituency, are economically liberal but socially conservative. That makes sense for a group that's been getting the short end of the economic stick for so long but within which exist elites and hierarchies that resist change as all others do. "Tradition" holds the shtetl together. So poor people are "conservative" in their own way.

I identify as "conservative" with a small c. Life is good for me. If you want to screw with the rules of the road, convince me that my SUV will still be able to travel it as fast as I in my dotage am prepared to drive. I understand that change is necessary, and I don't oppose it on principle. But I do demand that its proponents not go all Bobby Kennedy and demand I prove to them "why not" by some unspecified and, therefore unmeetable standard. The people who ask "why?" are not wrong to do so. The people who ask "why not?" can't call commons sense "mere speculation" and expect to persuade anyone to join their cause.

My brand of conservatism is institutionalist. I think Trump and Trumpism are absolutely awful. But Trumpists have arrogated "conservative" to themselves, and the left has bought into the ploy, using the word to mean resistant to specific changes. With that semantic development, it's hardly surprising how few people self-identify as "conservative." But my guess is that they are as conservative as ever, just under a different label.