There is a better way to pick a presidential nominee

IS THE Democratic Party making a mistake by re-nominating President Biden to face the likely Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in 2024? A non-trivial number of voices in and outside the party seem to think so.

But it’s already a mostly moot point. The system Americans use to nominate presidential candidates is not well-equipped to make swift strategic adjustments. Voters choose candidates in a sequence of state-level primaries and caucuses. Those contests select delegates and instruct them on how to vote at a nominating convention. It’s an ungainly and convoluted process, and politicians begin positioning themselves a year in advance to succeed in it.

It wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t have to be. Political parties in most democracies have the power to choose their leaders without going through a months-long gantlet.