[E]ven if Sanders had beaten Trump, the current primary process still gives too much power to the whims of the people. The Republican Party, in many ways, provided us with a real service last year by showing us what can happen when the party-democracy pendulum swings too far in one direction. The product of that is Trump, a man who not only rejects much of what his party believes in and actively undermines that party's leadership, but who is also proving to be a highly flawed and divisive president and is facing an unusually strong chance of impeachment or resignation.

Arguing for less-direct voter control of nominations--or of anything, really--is a tough sell in American politics. But quite a few people are or will be open to dramatic reforms in the way we nominate presidential candidates this year. So it's time to make the argument.

It might not be popular, but the lesson of 2016 was that parties should be allowed to be parties. They don't have to make decisions in secret, but they should still make decisions, rather than outsourcing those decisions to voters.

Georgetown University political scientist Hans Noel has proposed a series of fairly modest reforms that could change the way our parties nominate presidents by making the process more amenable to negotiation and compromise. His proposals are threefold:

*Make the primaries and caucuses proportional rather than winner-take-all. That means that, if a candidate wins 40 percent of Ohio's primary vote, she gets 40 percent of the delegates from that state, not all of them. This makes it less likely that a candidate will clinch the nomination prior to the convention, meaning a candidate's supporters would still need to negotiate with other campaigns to get the nomination.

*Shorten the time between the first and last primaries and caucuses so that candidates who aren't necessarily winning in fundraising might still make it to the end. This would mean more viable candidates still in play at the convention, forcing party insiders to negotiate on a nominee and review the candidates' various strengths and weaknesses.

*Make contests less about the candidates and more about the delegates. This could include unbinding delegates from the voters' choices.

Personally, I'd be in favor of just getting rid of any formal delegate pledges, functionally making every delegate super.