I absolutely agree with your analysis. Change was necessary, but it was resisted over and over again, up to the moment when things really got out of hand.

And I agree even more with the point you about the aristocrats not wanting to let go the power they had for centuries. IMHO, that'a fact that does not come out in most of superficial analysis about this period of Rome. I'm thinking of some articles in magazines and/or short biographies on Caesar (not historical or philo-historical publications) or in some documentaries I've seen around. These normally present Caesar and Augustus as the destroyers of an utopical republic, which Rome was not. It was a republic in the very particular sense that only a few families had the power (even if every once in a while a homo novus might reach it). Election were not quite so liberal as ours and only a minority of citizens really got the chance to actually vote, bribery was widely used by almost all candidates (while normally this is stressed only for JC and Augustus) and Pompey... was not such a "stain-less" and legally-prone defender of the Republic.

At times, it seems to me as if the optimates did not really "see" that things HAD to change. If they had, they might have retained a more substantial role in running Rome and the Empire. Heraklia couldn't say it better, they were "stupidly self-seeking and blind to the larger good". And they did sign their own end with their own bramosy for power.
I'd just like it to become a common knowledge concept.