I asked them to clarify what Dems were conserving.

That’s not how labels work.

The word conservative could be anything. They could be tribalists, or rightists, or flerganopolists, and it would be no more meaningful to ask, ‘what are they flerging?’ The answer begins, no. Trying to hold a group to the dictionary definition of a widespread label is a category error. You might as well ask why so many leftists are right-handed.

This is crucial in understanding conservatives, because there is nothing they’re conserving. When you expect that to constrain their actions, they will contradict and disappoint you. The only meaning with predictive value is reality as a team sport.

When you view conservatives as loyalists, they will never surprise you. That is their guiding ethos. They only see a hierarchy where the people above them are smart and handsome and correct, or else they wouldn’t belong above them. When you point out someone above them is flatly incorrect, that is taken as a personal attack, usually met with character assassination, because they don’t know the difference. In this worldview - it is impossible for someone to simply be wrong. There is no objective means to evaluate claims. That is not what claims are for. Any critic must be marked as a wrong person. A wrong person is incorrect even when they repeat what a right person said.

Notably, this is distinct from right-wing politics. Mitt Romney is not a conservative. He’s a right-wing asshole, for certain, but only because he bought some previous set of excuses for whatever the conservative hierarchy needed to be true, at the time. When he later pointed out the Republican figurehead is fucking obviously a criminal moron, the rest of the conservative movement labeled him a charlatan and a traitor. All they care about is maintaining loyalty to the current figurehead. They will contradict themselves in the same sentence and not give one solitary shit, so long as the conclusion is: ingroup good, outgroup bad.

What that rando in the title presumably meant is that Democratic politicians have taken up previously Republican policies. Obamacare, for example, is Newt Gingrich’s counterproposal to Hillary Clinton’s mid-90s push for universal healthcare. Republicans in 2014 called Newt Gingrich’s plan communism. Newt fucking Gingrich. Because they don’t really give a shit about anything besides ingroups and outgroups. A Democrat - a black Democrat! - proposed this plan. Therefore it’s the worst thing ever, and wow jeeze why does everyone keep asking about Newt Gingrich? His decrepit ass didn’t propose it, this time. Some wrong person did. Therefore it’s wrong. End of thought process.

The overwhelming majority of Democrats are not conservative. We care what words mean. We’re pushing for lesser evils, because we want… less evil. In 2014, getting any healthcare reform was better than none, so in an effort to minimize conflict, we tried meeting Republicans where they allegedly were. They were just lying. And for some reason our elected officials are really bad at acknowledging when conservatives and/or right-wing assholes are just pretending to be reasonable.