i listened to most of the same podcasts katkid did and sort of agree that there just isn't any good system that could practically be imposed in the united states. i do think there are three improvements that are feasi ble.
1. cut down the length of the campaigning. there is a first mover advantage so campaigns are forced to begin early, but it just bores the electorate, costs an enormous amount of money and increases donor influence over voter influence. have a start date in like sept or so. candidates will still signal and build organizations before that, but it will at least dampen the length of the race.
2. rotate early states. include a variety (demography, geographic region, economic concentration) of lower population states and rotate which of them gets to go in the first 3-5. allows the retail politics that some feel is important, but reduces the influence of individual states.
3. all primaries, no caucuses. this one seems sort of obvious, but david schor had an interesting point yesterday that caucuses in some way act as a safeguard against populism/fascism (for example caucuses tended not to favor trump in 2016). if you're on the left, caucuses also favor the left in dem races. nonetheless, i think the argument for including more of the electorate in the selectorate (word i just learned from the 538 podcast) argues for this reform.
the process would still suck, though. my fundamental takeaway from the podcasts is that there's no good way of doing this.
