POLITICO’s Holly Otterbein and I have been talking to Democratic officials, convention planners, and network producers about what the switch from real to virtual means. (Can you have a balloon drop in the basement? How do you have an applause line if there is no applause?) But one consistent question raised by the death of the conventions is whether they will or should ever return in their pre-2020 form.

Conventions long ago stopped being deliberative bodies that chose the presidential and vice presidential nominees. Howard Dean, the former head of the DNC, told me today that a new rule change this year even gives Biden the sole authority to nominate his running mate. (Previously delegates would still have a vote, but that’s been pro forma for a long time, and now it has been dispensed with entirely.)

Policy conflicts over platform language were once serious business, but they no longer matter as much. As far back as 1996 Bob Dole, the Republican presidential nominee, dismissed the relevance of the platform when he shrugged, “I haven’t read it.” This year, Republicans simply adopted the entire 2016 platform verbatim. The Democrats have had a more robust debate but they already worked out their platform before the convention starts.

The conventions are still justified as vehicles for raising money, for highlighting the next generation of talent, and — most importantly — for speaking unmediated to the electorate over four nights of prime-time speeches. The virtual conventions this year will dispense with everything except the primetime programming — which is really the main event anyway, and can be done without putting thousands of people in a tightly packed convention center.