[Amendment10]

Note that the question of nullification would probably be less of a concern today if the 17th Amendment had not been ratified. After all, the Founding States had established Senate to protect state's rights in Congress. For example it was the Senates job to kill appropriations bills which the HoR couldn't justify under Congress's Article I, Section 8 powers.

“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.

But after the pro-big federal government Progressive Movement succeeded in stealing control of the Senate from state legislatures, giving control of the Senate to low-information voters who were probably clueless about Congress's limited power to lay taxes, the Sentate became the enemy of the state legislatures. This is because crooks got themselves elected to Congress to "legally" steal people's money, arguably state revenues, in the form of constitutionally indefensible federal taxes.

[Jacquerie]

the Sentate became the enemy of the state legislatures. Agree. I would only add the fine point that the moment the 17th was ratified, when vertical separation of powers was destroyed, the DC government was at once consolidated, just as James Madison feared and Patrick Henry expected. What is amazing is not that we have an Obama, but rather that it took so long.