“...Like you, James Madison originally proposed proportional representation in the Senate...”
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I proposed no such thing.
But like I said, since passage of the 17th, discussions of the original balance seem moot.
I read your link from a couple of weeks ago (Ulysses at the Mast) regarding the reasons behind the 17th.
From what I get out of the analysis, the author pretty much shot down the commonly given:
reason #1 (corruption in naming senators) and
reason #2 (long lasting vacancies in the senate) and identified
reason #3 as the main push that “the people” wanted to have their voices heard.
Further evidence of the evolution from a representative republic to a full mob rule democracy.
I can't say I read very closely the link I sent you a couple weeks ago. You are more familiar with it than I am, but your points ring true.
I do recall that under the Confederation the states had trouble with both legislative houses being derived from the same source, i.e. the people. So our own history taught us that popularly elected houses of reps as well as senates was a bad idea, and we went ahead and did it anyway with the 17th.
Yes, full circle as you say, all the way back to mob rule democracy.