Yes.
The appointed Senators were the protectors of the 10th Amendment.
Once they were gone, all barriers to unlimited Federal expansion disappeared.
1913 really was the year of Progressive victory: Direct election of Senators; the Income Tax; The Federal Reserve.
The New Deal would have looked a lot different if none of those had been in place in 1933.
“The appointed Senators were the protectors of the 10th Amendment.”
Were they really? I think the income tax amendment was the big change. Millions more for the federal government. A useful experiment would have been to space out the two changes and see how protective of state powers senators elected the old way would have been once they got all that money.
<>The New Deal would have looked a lot different if none of those had been in place in 1933.<>
Great point. The 17A made the New Deal possible. Few elected senators were willing to push back against the enormously popular FDR. By 1945, when FDR ended up appointing eight of nine Scotus judges, the demise of our Constitutional order was in sight.