Last week, I wrote a little about how I'd change up the Democratic primary process. You'll notice that, of the changes I proposed, two seriously disadvantaged the candidate I'm supporting this year, two disadvantaged the candidate I'm opposing, and two aren't easy to classify from a short-term electoral perspective.

On the other hand, most vigorously stated arguments about process mysteriously benefit the side proposing them. It's almost as if the process argument is a cover for a results-based argument that you're less comfortable making!

This is one reason I've adopted two mantras with my candidates. First, that the overwhelming majority of voters don't really care about process stories. Second, that 99% of arguments about process are really about results. Neither of these is a revolutionary idea, but as we hear more and more about an "unfair" process these dictums are useful to remember and use to analyze partisan pouting.

So the next time a Sanders supporter fumes about how superdelegates are undemocratic, but caucuses are great - and flipping delegates that you lost on election night by packing party conventions is also great - there's a pretty obvious, and extremely human, reason for that disconnect. They're not arguing about process; they're just trying to get the results they want. The same goes for any Clinton supporter who argues that superdelegates should overturn the will of the voters, or that the October 2015 party change deadline in NY is great, though I don't hear that argument much if ever from my side of this primary.

It's also why I am always going to tell my candidates to talk about the issues that matter to the voters, not focus on inside baseball minutiae that just does not matter to anyone in the real world.

Much has been written this year about how "unfair" or "undemocratic" the primary process is on both sides of the aisle. As a Democrat, I care far more about making my side's process as good as possible, so I want to focus on making the Democratic process as good as possible and address some of the criticism lobbed the Party's way.

Some of that critique is sour grapes, confusion, or obfuscation. Hillary Clinton is currently the prohibitive favorite to be the Democratic nominee not because of superdelegates but because she's won more votes and more pledged delegates. Some of that critique holds a lot of water - superdelegates shouldn't exist at all, and caucuses are an undemocratic anachronism. Some is more nuanced, like the choice of closed versus open primaries.

So with that in mind, here's a few ways I'd fix the process for 2020 or 2024. Are you ready for some radical ideas?

1) Ban Caucuses. Making it harder to vote goes against everything we stand for as a Party. Caucuses are fundamentally undemocratic and shouldn't be used to help determine a Party's presidential nominee. Hold primaries with long enough hours on convenient dates. Period.

2) Require closed primaries. Let's separate this issue from the question of who it would benefit this year and look at it logically. A primary exists for one reason: to determine who the voters of the Democratic Party want representing us in the general election. When you register as an independent, what you are affirmatively saying is that you don't want to associate yourself with a political party. If you want to say "I'm not a Democrat - I'm an Independent!" you shouldn't be surprised if that means you won't be able to help pick the Democratic nominee.

By the same token, I don't think I should get to pick the Republican Party's nominee... Or the Green Party's nominee... or the Libertarian party's nominee... You get the picture. We have a political party system, and if you want to stand apart from it, that means you're standing apart from it.

By the same token, however, you should be able to change your Party registration up until, say, one month before the primary. But if you want to help pick the Democratic Party nominee, you should be a Democrat.

3) Eliminate delegates entirely and determine the winner based on the national popular vote. For better or worse, the candidate who gets the most votes should basically always be the nominee. My vote should count just as much - no more and no less - than that of any other Democrat anywhere in America. If every state is holding a primary with basically the same rules, there's no reason to intermediate the will of the voters at all. Forget superdelegates; why have delegates at all?

4) Instant runoff voting. Without delegates, a broadly unacceptable candidate could easily end up with a 40% plurality and win *cough* *Donald Trump* *cough*. The solution is instant runoff voting, where a voter ranks the candidates in order of preference, and the lowest scoring candidate's votes are reallocated until someone has a majority. This could be devilishly complicated to actually achieve in practice, but would allow for a system that ensured that the most broadly acceptable candidate to the Party would tend to get the nomination.

5) Rotating Regional Primaries. Whatever you feel about the merits of Iowa and New Hampshire, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for a party so heavily dependent on urban and minority votes to privilege rural, white voices above and beyond every other perspective in our Party. At the same time, no state and no constituency deserves an outsize voice in the nominating process.

Right now, the 57 contests on the Democratic side will be held on 24 different dates over 135 days. The process should both start later, end quicker, and be consolidated. I support something like this, with regions of the country voting as a group every two weeks over a two month period. Start the second week in April, end by the first week in June.

6) Fix public campaign finance with matching funds. We have a broken national campaign finance system. Until we can overturn Citizen's United, the best way to limit the impact of big money is to match the first $100 donated to a Presidential candidate - with a corresponding spending cap, set at a high enough number for candidates to run a credible campaign. This would dramatically increase the influence of small donors, and would provide a massive boost to insurgent and/or grassroots candidates. It doesn't do anything about SuperPACs - which, again, require a Supreme Court decision to fix - but it would dramatically empower every-day citizens in the political process.

None of these are a cure-all, and I know some people won't agree with all of them, but I think this is a good start at improving the process.