The direct election of Senators lead to the crop of party hacks we have in there. Then you cite the predominance of party as the reason you support the direct election of senators!
We once had statesman like John Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster (don't look it up - tell me what party they represented.) Now you're agitating for keeping the current system that brings us Olympia Snowe, Harry Reid, and Richard Durbin!
Nice system you're defending. Return to the constitutional roots. In almost every case, a return to the founder's original intent would better our nation. They were quite smart.
You’re not going to bring back the 19th century with this. There were just as many incompetent party hacks (if not more so) than statesmen then. Calhoun (Dem/Nullifier), Clay & Webster (Whig). I know what parties they were without looking them up. They also were elected during a time that only certain people were even participating in elections (that meant no women, no non-Whites, mostly people that weren’t social parasites). You also grandstanding charlatans (Sumner-MA Republican) and outright psychotic racists (Tillman-SC Democrat) elected under that system.
Snowe wouldn’t have been elected under the system you espouse, Chellie Pingree would, who makes Snowe look like Jesse Helms. Dingy Harry Reid would be Senator for like in NV (the last time the GOP had a numerical majority in the legislature was 1995-96), and so would Dick Durbin in IL. Those two would be precisely the kinds of turds and parasites the repeal of the 17th would bring. Ted Kennedy, too. In fact, the Northeast would lock in Senators-for-life once parties established absolute control after the Civil War. If you were a Vermont Democrat for a century-and-a-half, you were as $hit out of luck as a Louisiana Republican at the end of Reconstruction clear up until today, which would STILL be blissfully “free” of Republican Senators.
It’s accountability I’m after, and as with Impy, who is also stuck in a complete Democrat-controlled city as I am, you’d remove one of the last offices I could vote for, as my votes for the legislature (and for the U.S. House) are thoroughly worthless. Those three offices in my city have been Democrat without interruption since Ulysses Grant was President, a lot longer than the folks in Chicago.