i really don't understand the current conservative fascination with repealing the 17th amendment. the average person almost certainly doesn't know what the seventeenth amendment says. and i suspect if you explained it to them, that wouldn't evoke any strong feelings against it.
and it's not clear to me why members of the public, whether conservative or liberal, would be opposed to having the ability to vote for their own senator instead of having someone else choose the senator for them. there doesn't seem to be any public controversy over the ability to vote for senators. so why do conservative politicians keep bringing it up as there is some broad untapped anti-17th sentiment? it's especially odd because the rhetoric about repealing the 17th is coming entirely from conservatives even though a repeal of that amendment would almost certainly deliver an even wider senate majority to democrats. so why are some rightwing candidates jumping on a bandwagon that, in the highly unlikely event that they actually pulled off a repeal, would end up damaging their own political prospects?
