Until it is safe for an attorney connectthedots to run against a sitting judge, elected judges are no better than appointed ones.
If the Constitutional remedies are either of no interest, or considered impractical and the federal judicary is going to continue to toss the Constitution, except when it suits their purposes, then election or elimination of federal judges could be considered.
Restoring Vitality to State and Local Politics by Correcting the Excessive Independence of the Supreme Court
This Article endorses the view of such political "conservatives" as Robert Bork, Pat Buchanan, Orrin Hatch, and Ed Meese that the Constitution of the United States is deeply flawed in conferring too large a political role on life-tenured Supreme Court Justices. It argues that a constitutional amendment to correct excessive judicial independence is long overdue, a conclusion, it contends, that ought be shared by all who believe, as the author does, that the right to self-government is the parent right on which our civil liberties and the market economy ultimately depend and that healthy institutions of self-government require substantial devolution of political power. The Article departs from the more radical remedies being suggested by the named "conservatives" to propose term limits for Supreme Court Justices and an empowerment of Congress in Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to restore as well as limit some powers of state and local governments. The latter proposal may be likened to the Home Rule provisions commonly found in state constitutions.
Nominees to the Supreme Court have all been lawyers, although there is no constitutional or legal requirement to that effect.
If the great bulk of law schools continue to mass-produce lawyers who defer to constitutional law and dicta instead of the constitution, then you would be better off with non-lawyers on the federal courts.
Hamilton's comments on the qualification, and election of judges.
The Avalon Project : Federalist No 78
That inflexible and uniform adherence to the rights of the Constitution, and of individuals, which we perceive to be indispensable in the courts of justice, can certainly not be expected from judges who hold their offices by a temporary commission. Periodical appointments, however regulated, or by whomsoever made, would, in some way or other, be fatal to their necessary independence. If the power of making them was committed either to the Executive or legislature, there would be danger of an improper complaisance to the branch which possessed it; if to both, there would be an unwillingness to hazard the displeasure of either; if to the people, or to persons chosen by them for the special purpose, there would be too great a disposition to consult popularity, to justify a reliance that nothing would be consulted but the Constitution and the laws.
There is yet a further and a weightier reason for the permanency of the judicial offices, which is deducible from the nature of the qualifications they require. It has been frequently remarked, with great propriety, that a voluminous code of laws is one of the inconveniences necessarily connected with the advantages of a free government. To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them; and it will readily be conceived from the variety of controversies which grow out of the folly and wickedness of mankind, that the records of those precedents must unavoidably swell to a very considerable bulk, and must demand long and laborious study to acquire a competent knowledge of them. Hence it is, that there can be but few men in the society who will have sufficient skill in the laws to qualify them for the stations of judges. And making the proper deductions for the ordinary depravity of human nature, the number must be still smaller of those who unite the requisite integrity with the requisite knowledge. These considerations apprise us, that the government can have no great option between fit character; and that a temporary duration in office, which would naturally discourage such characters from quitting a lucrative line of practice to accept a seat on the bench, would have a tendency to throw the administration of justice into hands less able, and less well qualified, to conduct it with utility and dignity. In the present circumstances of this country, and in those in which it is likely to be for a long time to come, the disadvantages on this score would be greater than they may at first sight appear; but it must be confessed, that they are far inferior to those which present themselves under the other aspects of the subject.