It matters, because unlike earlier proposals, the Progressives had growing government and undermining the Constitution as a specific goal. Earlier generations were merely trying to bring consistency to senatorial election, and had no anti-Constitutional intent.
It's in their own writing, the progressives. They were DONE with the Constitution. And still are, BTW.
It doesn’t matter that Progressives advocated direct election when it had already been proposed in Congress for over 90 years, long before Progressives were even born.
Election by state legislatures had its own problems that were well known.
It was a policy no more written in stone than any other feature found in the Articles of Confederation.
The Philadelphia convention jettisoned state legislature election for the House. There’s no reason that the policy is any better when used for the Senate since either way each State gets equal representation in that chamber.