Your comments defining the optimates as a class and explaining their function in the republic are very well-put and worth considering. Call them bureaucrats, civil servants, deep state, power elite, whatever -- they need to know what to expect from each other. Applies not only to the fall of the Democrats but also to the structural decline of Japan's LDP uniparty, which is steadily being replaced by left and right populists.
Your comments defining the optimates as a class and explaining their function in the republic are very well-put and worth considering. Call them bureaucrats, civil servants, deep state, power elite, whatever -- they need to know what to expect from each other. Applies not only to the fall of the Democrats but also to the structural decline of Japan's LDP uniparty, which is steadily being replaced by left and right populists.