Quite ironically, in many cases we’ve completely defeated the purpose of the 17th Amendment
The Senate was meant to be removed from direct democracy, to allow it to be free from the passions of the mob. The Constitution state that Senators were meant to be chosen by state legislators.
Now in many cases they are simply chose by one person - the governor!
As goes the governor, goes the senators. I prefer that power be returned to the state executive.
Yeah, that's what they used to say in "Civics" class. It's only partially true. The more important reason was that the Senators, appointed by the legislatures of the several States and beholden to them, were intended to be the States' "check and balance" against the Federal Government usurping the powers reserved to the States.
Yes but it isn’t how their chosen that is important. It is who they are accountable to that matters.
Senators were supposed to be accountable to and therefor represent the interests of their STATE.
The beauty of the Constitution is how it tried to pit three entities against one another....
Executive/Judicial/Legislature
The individual/State/Federal
...knowing that if one interest became too powerful, it could be overridden by the other two.
The ugliness of the Constitution is how it failed to put in sufficient protections to maintain itself.
It is now a useless, dead document that will only be used to hamstring it’s proponents and defenders by those who have no respect for it at all.