When the 17th amendment was passed, state legislatures were cesspools of corruption and cronyism, not spokesmen for the local citizenry. The men they appointed were mostly hacks. This would not be empowering to the people, especially since so many state legislative districts are rigidly gerrymandered for partisan advantage.
That is true, and the Senate would no doubt return to being a body of cronies (has it ever stopped being a body of hacks?) On the other hand, those cronies would serve different interests from the politicians in the House, and any extra energy spent by those bodies fighting each other would be energy not spent attacking the people.
That may be, but I don't know. If true, at least we could say it was the people's government, regardless of how bad. And the people get what they deserve if they allowed it to remain to the point where it could not be restored. There are doubts that our present from of government can be restored.
At this point, with so many awakened to the lop-sidedness of powers, I think there would be wide-spread support for a repeal. Folks these days are quick to become active and involved in preserving what the founders handed down to us, IMO, as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of politically-active unpaid members of reform and restoration groups.