Very nice post and historical examples. The American Confederacy one seems at odds with the others, however: less an entrenched elite opinion than an attempt at radical reform (including seceding from the old elites!) that backfired.

This makes me nervous about cherry-picking. It is certainly the case that sometimes, elites resisting reform leads to bad outcomes, but it is also the case that sometimes, reforms that should have been resisted happen anyway and lead to bad outcomes. It's unclear to me that the historical record shows a bias towards either of these two possibilities.