Before the election, some pundits were predicting that a Trump defeat would cause the Republican Party to split into at least two discrete new parties — one representing the old GOP's business establishment, the other for the populist firebrands of the tea party. As the fight over gutting Obamacare reveals, those factions are in an uncomfortable marriage. But a full-fledged rupture doesn't appear imminent.

A bigger story, one the corporate political writers aren't focused on, is on the left. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Democratic Party split in two.

In my imagined scenario, the liberal Democratic base currently represented by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren file for divorce from the party's center-right corporatist leadership caste. What next? Led by Sanders/Warren or not (probably not), prepare to see a major new "third" party close to or equal in size to a rump Democratic one.