That is far less of a problem, as long as those Democrats represent the Democrat legislature in their individual states.
The disaster that was the 17th Amendment did two terrible things. First it made senators responsible to no one, if they could just fool the public or buy the election once each six years. Since it was passed, senators just utterly ignore their home states and think of themselves as independent agents, or much worse, “federal” representatives, or even today “international” representatives. They act like Robin Williams in his role as King of the Moon.
The other terrible thing was a side effect of this. By not having to answer to their states, the states were eliminated as the gateway to direct federal involvement in the lives of individual citizens. If a bureaucrat wants to involve himself in your life today, he can, and your state cannot prevent him from doing so, or even act as a buffer.
As such, the 17th Amendment was the enabling act of the 16th Amendment, The Income Tax, *and* the 18th Amendment, Prohibition, and all the federal prohibition-style laws created ever since.
Were Republican state legislatures responsible for appointing Republican senators, a LOT of RINOs would get the boot, because RINOs have not just made it a habit of sticking it to conservatives, but to their own states as well.
Of course. After passing the 17th amendment, those rascally popularly elected Senators immediately got into their time machine and traveled backwards in time two years earlier to convince the state-legislative appointed Senators to pass the 16th amendment and enact an income tax! Obviously, due to the fact all state-legislature appointed Senators and infallible and noble politicians committed to the best interests of their states, they NEVER would have DARED enact an income tax if not the evil time-traveling popularly elected Senators from the future making them do so.
Likewise, the passage of the 17th amendment is also directly responsible for World War I, the sinking of the titanic, the trail of tears, the assassination of James A. Garfield, bleeding kansas, Dred Scott, Aaron Burr killing Alexander Hamilton, the stamp act, and of course, the Black Death in medieval Europe.
Never underestimate the evil that the 17th amendment can wrought due to the abilities of popularity elected Senators to time-travel back to events that happened BEFORE the amendment was passed.
I agree with your analysis -cases in point, the repeal of DADT, the passage of Health Care Reform, NCLB, the Department of Education, Voter Rights Act, etcetera -ALL squeaky wheel, knee jerk, or special interest group populist initiatives that did not give States a seat at the table to craft and add input into.