When power was divided between the states and the government they created the deleterious tendency of party loyalty was minimized. We'll never know for sure, but I cannot envision today's horrid situation, in which party members typically serve as obedient foot soldiers to party leaders would exist had it not been for the 17th Amendment. Interests across our wide continent were too varied for state senators to become captive to nationwide party fund raising.
Our government has become something similar to that which we revolted against in 1775. The British constitution was whatever parliament determined it to be. By the mid-18th century, British government had been reduced to combat between Whigs and Tories for power and wealth. The written US constitution has likewise been replaced with legislative, executive, and judicial precedent; it means whatever the DC denizens wish it to mean. The Hanoverian Kings found they had to buy and bribe members of parliament to get legislation passed. Sound familiar?
So the US system has been reduced to a system similar to the British. Yes, the states and three Washington DC institutions exist and meet to conduct business, but it is all overlaid and controlled by lawless political parties whose interests are ambition and avarice, power and wealth . . . not constitutional government, nor the general welfare, nor individual rights.
Much has been written at FR about the Uniparty, the co-joining of interests. It is happening. The two parties are becoming one, cemented together with identical interests, the aforementioned ambition and avarice. When that union is concluded, when America becomes a true one party state, the grand experiment in republican freedom will be over, for the mask will slip, and reveal that the entire apparatus of a once free people has been corrupted into a self-serving instrument of plunder.
Article V before we can't.