which would favor only those candidates who had enough money to run a national campaign.

It's important that we start off with several individual contests over the course of a few weeks. That way, the field is winnowed substantially by Super Tuesday. A national primary would result in massive vote-splitting, and it's likely that nobody would have anywhere close to a majority of pledged delegates.

Following those initial individual contests, candidates need at least a couple full months to campaign. This is a big country (3rd largest in the world in terms of both population and area). It takes a lot of time, money and energy to run a national campaign.

But we do need to do away with caucuses (fortunately, many states are doing just that) and we should start with more diverse states (since the states that go first do inevitably have a disproportionate amount of influence). We could have different states start things off every 4 or 8 years, but they should always be states that do a fairly good job of reflecting our electorate.

After those first 4 or 5 contests (all primaries; no more caucuses), we could then have a series of 4 Super Tuesdays and be done.

A caucus is an open meeting, at which voters who are registered with the party discuss and debate presidential candidates. When they’re finished talking, they vote for the delegates who will back their favored candidate at the national convention.

On a state’s caucus day, these meetings are held all over the state, divided into precincts. At the end of the day… a number of delegates will emerge from each precinct who will go on to the national convention. The number of delegates from each state’s caucus are decided differently depending on the party.

Unlike primaries, which are run by state governments, caucuses are run by political parties.

https://informationstation.org/video/what-is-a-caucus/

...a very lengthy and public process.

Fortunately, there will be far fewer in 2020. And every remaining caucus state must now accept absentee ballots.

California and New York tend to be more liberal, so they're moved to the back of the pack so the conservative states can get the first shot at winnowing the field. That's why we moved our primary date up for next year. We're tired of having candidates rush out here to make a cash run and then not have a say in who becomes the nominee.

I think the states that start off each time should change from one primary to the next, and they should be states that reflect our overall electorate in terms of demographics. Although I live in California, I'm not sure it's right to have such a large state be one of the first four or five states. But I have no issue with us voting on the first Super Tuesday.