I'll just leave this here...

We need a nomination process that leads to plausible presidents
- George F. Will

In 1964, an optimistic theory was slain, as such theories often are, by reality. Bernie Sanders’s supporters should take note. So should all who are interested in rethinking how the parties choose presidential nominees.

The “conservatives in the woodwork” theory was: Millions of conservatives, bored by centrist presidential candidates, skipped elections but would pour out of the woodwork and into polling places if offered “a choice, not an echo.” So, conservative Republicans achieved the nomination of Barry Goldwater, who then lost 44 states, partly because those swarms of nonvoting conservatives were mostly fictitious. A conservative majority had to be patiently made, which took 16 years.

Goldwater understood that after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, a distraught nation would not choose to have a third president in 14 months. But he also thought that his candidacy could make his party markedly more conservative. If Sanders has a “socialists in the woodwork” theory, he is daft. But some Sanders supporters might think a second Donald Trump term is an acceptable price to pay for a Sanders nomination that moves his party as dramatically leftward as Goldwater’s nomination moved his party rightward.

The nation, however, needs a nominating process that minimizes the probability of kamikaze candidacies and maximizes the probability of selecting plausible presidents. Hence it needs a retreat from the populist idea that the voice of the people is easy to ascertain and should be translated, unmediated and unrefined, directly into nominee selection. Populism has been embraced by both parties since 1968, when Hubert Humphrey won the Democrats’ nomination without entering any primaries. (Although a switch of about 300,000 November votes spread over four states would have made him president.)

The rest: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-need-a-nomination-process-that-leads-to-plausible-presidents/2020/02/06/8e9c0286-4917-11ea-9164-d3154ad8a5cd_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most