Prior to 1913, US senators were appointed by state legislatures

[Recycle_Guru]

The National Archives has the documents and history around this important amendment.

Aside from cases where houses in legislature couldn't agree and senate seat was vacant for months or years, there was also tremendous corruption in these appointments--millionaire's club".

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/17th-amendment

That was the Progressive Era in the wake of gilded age and robber barons. We need a way to generate grass roots support of new progress on things like makeup of Supreme Court, removal of electoral college, etc.

[Polybius]

1. I still can't believe that the 17th passed

It would never have today.

[Recycle_Guru]

2. thats what I was thinking--also, Rich people found a way to circumvent

and continue the millionaires club in many states. But we have folks like Merkeley and Warnock because of our direct elections.

[Model35mech]

3. Yep.

One of the core beliefs of the authors was that our nation and it's constitution would not be perfect, but it would be possible to make it more perfect as time went on.

If only that belief was still common... we would find it much easier to pull the 2nd amendment out of the days of no standing army but rather militiamen that had to provide their own guns.

[Recycle_Guru]

4. precisely. gathering up the will of the people is challenging

but very powerful when it happens. Noam Chomsky repeatedly mentions this--we, the people, really forget how much power we have. The powerful work hard to keep us passive and not engaged in solving our problems