The Senate is supposed to represent the sovereign states corporately - that is each individual state as a whole. Post 17th Amendment a senator is just a glorified state-wide congressman-at-large. By turning him/her into “just another congressman” you introduce all the partisanship (The House was always supposed to be partisan. That’s why the 2-year terms!) The 17th Amendment reduced the states to being nothing more then administrative boundaries - provinces like the nations of Eurasia have! Moving away from the Constitutional structure of the Founding Fathers and making us a mob-ocracy is the source of almost all our problems. Government power is derived from the Founders Constitution is derived from both directly from the people through their congressional districts and directly from the states through legislature appointed senators (Note the people are indirectly involved since they elect the legislators.) Wilson and his Progressives hated all of that in their eyes it wasn’t “Modern” (Whatever that means!). They knew by breaking the “republican” features of the Constitution the people can be far easier to manipulate. Now “the people “ could be guided to utopia by “their betters”; the professional politician class and “Ivy League trained bureaucratic elite”. We have seen the truth of that in spades particularly now with the mass manipulation techniques of marketing (Go read a marketing textbook!)in the modern media. Another problem with the post 17th Amendment world is the “at-large” senator he/she is a much bigger player in the budget game because of the introduced “partisanship”. You now have essentially two HORs fighting over the same budget pie to hand out goodies to their constituents and supporters. Both sides going to the media to manipulate the voters to keep passions high. It’s no wonder things end up as they do!