Let’s review the bidding.  The Republican Party has been upended in the present Presidential election cycle.  Establishment candidates like Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum, and Mike Huckabee and established Tea Party and Tea Party-ish candidates like Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina, and Ted Cruz all have been defeated by an avowedly anti-establishment candidate, the all but formally nominated Donald Trump.  Even the Party’s libertarian candidate was roundly defeated across the primaries.

The Democratic Party has been nearly as roundly upended, even though it only had the diversity to put up just two candidates.  Socialist candidate Bernie Sanders, running in the Democratic primaries on anti-establishment imperatives just as avowedly as Trump…is still running, even though he has a very narrow path to the Democrats’ nomination.  Establishment candidate Hillary Clinton has been dragged far to the left, as has the entire Democratic Party, away from their establishment roots by Sanders’ effectiveness, durability, and his farther left positions.

Over the weekend, the Libertarian Party selected their President and Vice President candidates, Gary Johnson and William Weld, respectively—two established governors.

The two establishment parties are putting up, or are about to put up, anti-establishment candidates, and the party on the outside looking in while claiming to be fundamentally anti-establishment, has decided to run an establishment ticket.

Some have suggested that this campaign season is operating under different rules.  It sure is.