They may be on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have a lot in common.

During this morning’s Big “I” Legislative Conference General Session Breakfast, Bob Beckel and Tucker Carlson discussed why the presidential election cycle has spiraled into its current state of spectacle during a political panel moderated by Bob Rusbuldt, Big “I” president & CEO.

“The two major parties have kind of ignored their voters,” said Carlson, a veteran journalist and political commentator who co-hosts the show “Fox and Friends Weekend” on Fox News Channel. “America has changed enormously in the past 25 years. The parties have not.”

Both panelists agreed that the appeal of Trump and Sanders lies in the middle class vote. “$30-40,000 used to be middle class America,” pointed out Beckel, a commentator for CNN who has served on numerous presidential campaigns and administrations. “Today, that’s poverty America. Sanders and Trump—they’re meeting so much on the back side.”

Thanks to dramatic transformations in American demographics over the past few decades, it’s no surprise that the current political system has become less attractive—especially for a voter base that feels silenced.

“At some point, there was going to be a crisis. The bottom line is the two insurgent candidates, Trump and Sanders, are both running against their own party structures,” Carlson said. “This is an attack on the people in charge of our political system, and they’re attacking on behalf of a really large group of people who feel like they’re left out of the fruits of globalization—basically what we used to call the middle class. I don’t think either party has offered much to them.”

Enter: a reordering of both parties. “The Democratic Party has moved dramatically left,” Carlson observed. “That’s been obscured by the Trump phenomenon, which has consumed all the oxygen, but the Democratic Party is totally different from the party [Bill] Clinton ran 16 years ago.”

“There’s no such thing as rules in these parties,” Beckel agreed. “Sanders has only been a Democrat for a year, but what does that mean? What are Republicans and Democrats anymore?”

In two areas in particular, demographic changes are having serious consequences for the American political system: racial and generational diversity. Beckel pointed out that soon, white Americans will make up less than 70% of the voting population.

“Three cycles ago, they were 80%,” Beckel noted. Moving forward, “Hispanic people will take up a larger portion and so will black people. Seventeen percent of the electorate is going to be Hispanic. Republicans will never elect a president if they keep driving away Hispanic people the way they do.”

Millennials have a big horse in the race, too: “Young people hate Trump because they think he’s racist—I don’t think that’s a fair criticism—and Clinton is regarded as dishonest,” Carlson said.

“Young people really do think with their hearts, and with their hearts they do not think Trump,” Beckel agreed. “It’s vicious. In Clinton’s case, they just won’t show up.”

However, Beckel said Clinton “will probably have a much better opportunity to rally the Democratic base than Trump will the Republican base. If it’s Clinton and Trump, you’re going to have people running for president whose negatives are astronomical.”

Still, Carlson predicts Clinton and Trump for the respective party nominees. “You’re hearing Republicans say, ‘We have a long history of nominating candidates who got fewer votes,’” he said. “Yeah, that’s true, but everything is different now—specifically people’s expectations about democracy. If there’s one message of the Internet, it’s ‘My voice counts. I’m a special snowflake. I matter.’ You’re going to tell a population of 320 million people trained for 20 years to believe that their opinion is deeply significant, and all of a sudden it’s not? You risk social trauma if you do that.”

“Take your eyes off Trump—turn the telescope around and look at who’s supporting him,” Carlson added. “You miss the phenomenon if you only look at the guy leading it. Look at the people supporting him. They have legitimate grievances that are unaddressed.”

Jacquelyn Connelly is IA senior editor.

Photo (left to right): Bob Beckel, CNN commentator; Bob Rusbuldt, Big "I" president & CEO; Tucker Carlson, co-host of “Fox and Friends Weekend." Photo by Midori Oglesby, Big "I" senior graphics designer.