But it’s clear that when Clinton wins the nomination—the corrupt super-delegate system employed by the Democratic Party will see to that, thank you very much—she has already lost the thread of whatever her presidency might have been. Like Jeb! Bush, Clinton has failed completely at articulating a larger vision that either she or her party can offer the country. If she did, she would end up simply echoing Sanders, who does a pretty good job of distilling what’s left of the Democratic version of the American Dream. For Bush and other establishment Republicans, the same problem holds. Trump is promising to “make America great again,” by which he means he will lead a country that once again issues orders to the world. Bush and other underwhelming presences such as John Kasich can only mumble that Trump isn’t philosophically consistent and that he’s mean, which has never troubled conservatives overly much (they believe in justice more than compassion, after all).

If it’s true that Trump and Sanders are the only candidates throwing off sparks, it’s worth underscoring that they are not genuinely popular among Americans writ large. Rather, they are generating intense responses among the shrinking ranks of partisans and dead-enders who respond to what they think are purer and purer distillations of what the parties really should stand for. As fewer and fewer of us choose to identify as Republicans and Democrats, those that still do will get harder- and harder- core until the number of true believers approaches zero.

And when that happens, the major parties will be forced to change what they stand for, not because they want to but because they won’t be able to win elections otherwise. Because of our first-past-the-post system, American will always have two major parties and there’s every reason to believe, at least for the forseeable future, they will be called Democrats and Republicans.