[Rapscallion]

My copy of the 17th Amendment establishes the requirement that there will be two senators from each state and the term will be six years. Each senator gets one vote. And it contains procedures to fill vacancies.

Seems okay to me. What am I missing that you see as so troubling that we need to repeal the 17th Amendment? Please tell me.

[okie01]

What am I missing that you see as so troubling that we need to repeal the 17th Amendment? Please tell me.

Prior to the 17th amendment, which provided for popular election of Senators, the state legislatures elected the Senators.

Senators thus represented the institution of the State, while the State's Congressmen represented the people of the State.

The 17th Amendment is thus a major reason why the states have lost so much power to the federal government over the past 100 years.

[Prospero]

The 17th Amendment was, very openly, part of the "Progressive" agenda in the early 20th century. Better to ask why such an amendment was so desired, or even necessary. In study of Theodore Roosevelt's and Woodrow Wilson's administrations (both of whom were proud Progressives), the superiority of the Federal government was accepted as "inevitable," even something already accomplished. Nationalism together with Mobilization on behalf of our efforts in "the Great War" in Wilson's 2nd term, sealed its fate.

Those voices questioning the dominance of Washington did not begin to find a voice until the austerity implemented by the Harding and Coolidge administrations following World War I when Washington was faced with the once unimaginable $6 billion federal debt, and before this the first Senate rejection of a negotiated treaty, the League of Nations. The 17th Amendment was ratified amidst the fog of such a time.

At that moment in our history Progressivism and what Wilson called "Americanism" were difficult to distinguish. "Federalism" as Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan eventually understood it had no Party.

All of this is sketched out in very broad strokes, of course, as none of it was anything like that simple.

Coolidge, who originally embraced progressivism, perhaps unwittingly challenged its central planks as Massachusetts' governor when he fired the Boston police strikers, as Wilson issued uncertain statements pushing the League out west, in the year before the GOP convention in 1920 literally demanded his nomination for Vice President.

Back to the present... one of the best arguments I've heard put forth in favor of the 17th amendment's repeal cites the almost invisibility of the state legislatures. Perhaps the People and their media outlets would pay much more needed attention to the shenanigans happening in their state capitals if their legislatures picked Senators and had, also, the power to recall them!

[Political Junkie Too]

My copy of the 17th Amendment establishes the requirement that there will be two senators from each state and the term will be six years. Each senator gets one vote. And it contains procedures to fill vacancies.

Everything you cite was in Article I. It is wrong to attribute those characteristics to the 17th amendment.

-PJ