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I wouldn't WANT my state legislators choosing my Senators. It's bad enough I'm disenfranchised with respect to my legislative members and my Congressional district (one party for 136 years, not GOP), but take my vote away for U.S. Senate, and my disenfranchisement will be complete for both Congress and the state legislature. 12 posted on June 25, 2010 10:15:37 PM EDT by fieldmarshaldj

You are not disenfranchised.
You still vote for the House members.

But the states - as political entities - have been disenfranchised.

In the immortal words of Billy Martin (in a Miller Lite beer commercial) "I feel strongly both ways - I never argue."
Gerrymandering does disenfranchise people - and the advent of computerized data on voter proclivities has made gerrymandering a science. So that the state legislatures - through the medium of drawing district lines - actually have more influence on the composition of the House than they now do of the Senate. The signal advantage of the direct election of senators is that the state borders may be arbitrary and capricious, but they are permanent. If you want to run for Senate and you don't move to a friendly state to do it (insert photo of Hillary here), you don't get to choose your own voters but have to convince the ones you've got. Full Stop.
The trouble with having a House strongly influenced by the states and a Senate which is not is twofold:

The large states have more influence in the House than the small states do, and

The Constitution assigns the authorities it does to the Senate on the assumption that the Senate represents the states, and to the House on the assumption that the House represents the people - and we now have it the other way around.

As matters now stand, with federally mandated "majority minority" districts, Democrats now participate in a gerrymander against themselves by concentrating black voters in districts which vote overwhelmingly Democrat - but which leave the other, more numerous, districts leaning more Republican than they otherwise would. That is also, of course, a mechanism for partisan polarization since the representatives of "majority minority" districts have negligible conservative opposition. I suppose that the principle of gerrymandering inherently produces a vociferous, but weak, minority dominated by a patronizing, probably self righteous, majority.
At any rate, the trouble with direct election of senators is that the functions - and length of term - of senators are designed for statesmen, and the mechanism for selecting them was designed by the Framers with that in mind - and instead, we have highly partisan legislators. It is an interesting fact that if the Electoral College were to fail to give a majority to any presidential candidate then the choice would devolve to the House voting by states:

The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote
so that in that specific case the House members would represent their states, and each state would have equal vote, as in the Senate. So by that mechanism, the House would function like the Senate normally does.
Maybe what each state needs is senators who are chosen by "senatorial electors" of that state (whose members are elected, from districts defined by the legislature, as Congressional Districts now are), and House members elected at large to eliminate gerrymandering.