I call a lot of what the teabaggers do insane, but repealing the 17th Amendment takes the cake.

Has there ever been a "populist" movement that was so completely bamboozled into supporting an elitist political issue?

"Power to the people! End direct elections of Senators!"

Morans.

They SHOULD use this - ALL of them - to BASH ALL republicans. Why? Because this is a classic problem of the hard right - to come up with stupid issues that would be a complete waste of everyones time. A 15 sec ad:

" Republicans want to take away your right to elect US Senators. SO, while we are at war, and Democrats are fighting economic problems, and transforming our education system, improving our infrastructure, and facing down tax cuts for the rich, Republicans across the country want to dey your right to vote. Keep your vote. Vote for xxxx".

Bigutah has a good script. Voters need to understand how undemocratic and unfair this idea is. If you don't explain it, they won't get it. If you do explain it, then they'll possibly tie that issue in with other corporatist anti-democratic ideas. But we can't presuppose voters will arrive there without some help.

Yep, better to have Senators be appointed by the Corporations....that is really the solution. fucking a .. on the other hand the Corporations already buy most of these Senators anyway. And, thanks to our 'Surpreme' Court, that will be ever more true.

Wait a minute, the big story here should be that she wants to repeal the 15th Amendment. For those who don't remember, it provides "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Unreal. She wants to reverse a core accomplishment of the civil war and the civil rights movement.

Let's make it easy...what part of the Constitution DO they like?

I guess I don't understand their rationale for wanting to do this. Can anyone explain what's behind their thinking (sic)?

thinking ?? Where?

You'd rather Tea Partiers be more active trying to repeal the 14th Amendment right?

If you all love the 17th Amendment so much, here's a test for you. See if you agree after three months worth of nasty TV commercials that will soon flood the airwaves, one after the other, and then count up all the millions spent on U.S. Senate races, all the money that's wasted in these exercises every two years and wonder how much the economy would benefit if all of it didn't get sucked down the drain of Senate races and then ask yourself "Gee, I wonder how the country functioned without electing U.S. Senators. Were we a dictatorship?"

@internationalist: I couldn't tell if she was saying 15th or 16th. Repealing the 16th would be right up the teabaggers' (and David Koch's) alley.

But if she said 15th, you're right . It's far worse.

While the repubs keep repeating the statement that Obama is passing a radical agenda - like health care for americans, fair pay for women, stopping Wall Street and banks from stealing our money, they (the repubs) who love the constitution keep wanting to change the bits they do not like.Are people that crazy that they do not know who is radical?

Somewhere the ghost of Mark Hanna is smiling...

yes friends, the tea party née Republican party wants to return to the good old days before the progressive movement. The days of no regulations, corrupt senators, and corporate monopolies, when the poor worked 15 hour days while the idle rich played in their Newport mansions.

Now, of course, we have the nouveau rich in the form of teapartiers who with no background or training think they can run the country and destroy those very Institutions which allowed them to become wealthy.

Meanwhile,

Boycott the Wall Street Journal

It's ugly, dated, and biased.

Internationalist is right -- trying to repeal the 15th amendment (much like trying to alter the 14th) is indefensible.

Proposing to repeal the 17th is not.

There is actually a great case to be made for restoring the Senate as a DIFFERENT kind of legislative body than the House. The House was always intended to be close to what the Founders considered to be mob rule. The Senate was always intended to represent STATES -- and for every progressive who is so sure he or she is going to win this argument by hollering that the Tea Party wants to take away the right to vote for US Senators, there are two progressives who complain that the Senate itself ought to be abolished (not just the filibuster) because .... er, for states to be represented in Congress is anti-democratic.

Only serious students of both history and politics recognize that the 17th amendment is the ultimate cause for two reversals of the Founders' intent: first, it is easier to spook the Senate, not the House, into precipitate action (cuz the rules are easier), and second, while it is harder to overrule a Senate minority, that is not because it is cooling popular passions: quite the opposite.

Now that Senators are popularly elected, their election campaigns are unbelieveably expensive. They spend every waking hour of their 6 year terms raising money.

If they were elected by state legislatures, that would change. Even if you take the cynical view that state legislators would simply take bribes to elect any of their own to the US Senate, it is a very different thing to elect 80 or 90 state reps or state senators in districts that turn a few hundred votes: a GENUINELY populist uprising is actually possible, and can't really be reliably purchased -- or bought off.

So for the fundraising effects alone, repealing the 17th is not a crazy idea, however unpopular it might be. (I note that PASSING the 17th amendment was FDR's first political cause, when he ran for the state legislature himself against Tammany, about a hundred years ago.)

'Course, if folks were really serious about restoring Congress to the people, they'd expand the House, which is both more likely and more practical.

Witness the Tea Party madness - get government off our backs while we give government the power to choose our states' senators! Oxymorons the lot of 'em! -Kevo

So, before we had the 17th in place, we had such as Senator Southern Pacific, Sen. AT&SF, Sen. New York Central and the like. If we abolish this, we will have Senator Chevron-Texaco, Sen. Wal*Mart (oops, we already have a couple of those), Sen. Wall Street and the like. Not much change, eh?

How does this compare with the Teabaggers' position on the Electoral College?

Does no one else see the irony in all this? The teatards' advocacy of repeal stands as irrefutable evidence of their collective stupidity. Were there no 17th Amendment in place, does anyone honestly believe that GOP legislators would have nominated Rand Paul, Sharron Angle or Joe Miller?

Having state legislatures appoint US senators will only lead to one thing....

fabulously wealthy state legislators

All that money now going into US Senate campaigns would now go into State Legislature campaigns and into the pockets of State Legislators, their Staff, Family and Friends.

If you think that this wouldn't happen you are naive in the extreme. No laws or set of laws can stop big money from funding those candidates it wants to fund.

And with ZERO accountability... For these Senators would not answer to anyone except those they bribed to get into office... The result would be mass corruption not seen since the Bush Admin privatized the Support services for the military, the implosion of the Soviet Union, the Harding Admin, James C Blane, the Grant Admin and the court of Louis XIV.

Remember Tammany Hall. Well, the result would make the boys of Tammany look like boy scouts.

meanwhile,

boycott the Wall Street Journal

It's ugly, dated, and biased.

"corrupt senators, and corporate monopolies"

Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, as if neither of these things exist today.

Gee, I wonder where all this money to fund these Senate camapaigns is coming from?

@theAmericanist:

"progressives who complain that the Senate itself ought to be abolished (not just the filibuster) because .... er, for states to be represented in Congress is anti-democratic."

The Senate is intended to be anti-democratic. Before the Constitution was written, the newly free colonies were sovereign; to convince the sparsely-populated colonies to join the others, we had to give them disproportionate power in the legislature. The Senate is a compromise.

Why should states be represented in Congress anyway? Why not people?

LOL -- Evan proves my point.

What was your point again? We should repeal the 17th Amendment because it will move the country closer to the founders' intended anti-democratic compromise?

Or we should repeal the 17th Amendment to accomplish the same thing as campaign finance reform, which would probably require a constitutional amendment to accomplish?

Some of these state legislatures that would be electing U.S. senators would, I suppose, be the same legislatures that are unable, year after year, to pass a state budget until the year in question is half over. Maybe they could manage to elect half a senator now and then, and that should be plenty good enough.

People who are advocating this change might want to look into the history of the 17th amendment's passage to find out what impelled two-thirds majorities in the House and the Senate (yes, the Senate itself) and three-fourths of the states to abandon the old system.

Were there no 17th Amendment in place, does anyone honestly believe that GOP legislators would have nominated Rand Paul, Sharron Angle or Joe Miller?
Posted by: Rasputin22 on September 8, 2010 at 12:29 PM

Nope. Also: not Buck in Colorado, probably not Rubio in Florida and definitely not O'Donnell in Delaware (though that one is still undecided, till next week).

Paul never has a point. He's a bundle of tics and symptoms.

THE WHOLE idea is stupid anyways.

it's another attempt to confuse the issue and waste time. repeal of the 17th would never pass congress or be ratified by the several states.

Can you image Senator Murdoch?

Incumbant Senators, who are directly elected, would never vote for it.

Meanwhile,.

BOYCOTT the Wall Street Journal

It's boring, dated, and biased.

Evan: the point I made, which YOU exemplified, is that progressives aren't in a particularly solid position to insist on the direct election of Senators, when folks like you argue that the Senate should be abolished altogether.

Didn't seem all that complex -- even Anthony would have gotten it, if he wasn't pathological.

I'll think of that the next time I advocate stridently for the direct election of senators, something I do all the goddamn time.

The talk about repealing the 17th amendment is useful insofar as it helps identify who is preoccupied with stupid bullshit and who is interested in actually solving some of the myriad problems our country faces. Liberals' responses, by and large, aren't outraged at the idea of reducing the number of officials elected to represent their states to the federal government; they're incredulous that this seems to be a winning electoral strategy.

Evan, I suppose you realize that what you just posted doesn't quite say anything. Recast it.

The basic motivation behind the Tea Party's proposal (if you can call it that) to repeal the 17th amendment is that the Senate is about states, which are closer to the people than the Federal government, and state legislators, who are closer to the people than Senators -- even though the Senators ARE directly elected by popular vote.

You might usefully ask yourself: how can that be? There's an obvious answer.

In most states -- 40 of the 50, at least -- Senate races are entirely media campaigns. There are campaign events, to be sure, handshaking and babykissing, but what actually moves votes is exclusively very expensive media.

If you're serious about DEFENDING the direct election of Senators: well, that's the system you're defending -- the way US Senators have to raise tens of millions of dollars a grand at a time, for every minute of their six year terms.

That's an extraordinarily vulnerable position to be in, even more so when it's clear that you've never, ever thought of it that way: since your default response is not to defend the actual system you're defending, but to attack the Senate itself -- a main load-bearing chunk of our Constitutional architecture, after all.

Personally, I don't think repealing the 17th has legs -- it's sort of principles trivia. But I don't think it's as easily dismissed as you guys think, because there IS a solid case to be made for it that forces opponents to defend the worst excesses of political fundraising AND contrarily insist that the distance between the elected and the voters is a good thing (which is after all the only argument FOR direct election), because that is created by the expense of media-drenched Senate races.

But increasing US representation is a far more valuable position -- and watch: the Right is about to own that issue, too, while the Left is... well, Anthony.

per the Americanist: there IS a solid case to be made for it that forces opponents to defend the worst excesses of political fundraising

Why not just go for publically funded elections and really put the power go with the people?

It's so easy to provoke one of Paul Donnelly's not-so-learned disquisitions. Remember, he types faster than anyone he's ever met!

Paul, the Senate sucks. Talking about our constitutional architecture isn't really an argument against that, "yanno".

LOL -- Anthony, nobody is interested in what little you have to say, much less in you, personally. (This is why nobody gives a shit when you post my name.) Fuck off while the grownups talk.

Sceptic: the basic problems with public financing are 1) it isn't the law, and 2) it's not very popular, so 3) it's not easy to enact.

To persuade the taxpayers to PAY -- involuntarily -- for political campaigns that already bug 'em is difficult. And various other schemes (the check off on your returns, etc.) all stall, sooner or later.

And of course, the Supremes have held that money is speech. A Senate candidate who can raise (or spend their own) $50 million, like in Connecticut (or Rockefeller in his first WV race, when I think it was $12 million -- "make him spend it all" was a great, if insufficient political response), has an advantage that is hard to offset.

But you're right: it IS a valid, internally consistent argument to say that Senators should be elected by the people of their respective states (Anthony has had trouble understanding that EACH Senator represents a WHOLE state; my advice is to be kind to him, cuz he tends to resent being corrected and leaves the little kid table), and any problems with how they do that, including the incessant fundraising that is their real job, once elected, can be fixed with legislation.

It's just not a particularly honest one, either politically or legislatively.

Did the guy who can't post a comment without writing "LOL" just call me a little kid?

LOL -- and he notes that you can't read, either: one of those skills most of us acquired while we were only chronologically a little kid.

Dude, seriously, if you can't write a comment without saying "LOL" you're still a little kid.

The argument that having senators appointed by state legislatures in order to reduce the effectiveness of fundraisers makes no sense. Right now they have to influence the entire state population. If senators are appointed by the legislature the population needing to be influenced is considerably smaller,and may not be be than a handful of legislators in charge of key committees. This would greatly expand the power of the major corporate power players in each state.

Typist, that isn't necessarily true because your reasoning is flawed.

Basically, you're demonstrating the "I hate democracy" argument that, oddly, lies beneath the attempt to rebut arguments for repealing the 17th amendment, which is why I note that it's not such an indefensible proposition as you guys think.

Take Mike Flood, the Speaker of the Nebraska Senate (because Nebraska has a unicameral legislature, courtesy of Ted Sorenson's dad; so it's an easy focus): he wins his elections by roughly 12,000 votes to 10,000 for his challenger. So right there, you see that his election -- for the most powerful position in the Nebraska legislature -- is more competitive than 95% of Congressional elections.

In his last campaign, he got less than $60k in campaign contributions, which works out to roughly $5 a vote.

Contrast Ben Nelson, the incumbent Democrat. In his last election (2006), he and the Republican challenger Pete Ricketts spent more than $20 million, tripling the previous Nebraska record -- for 600,000 votes between 'em: roughly $30 a vote.

Your notion that state legislators MUST be more corrupt, and MUST be more easily swayed by heavy spending, runs directly counter to the facts. Get a dozen networks of a hundred voters each to change their minds, and Flood loses. That's the work of a couple phone trees of volunteers with a real issue.

You can't do anything REMOTELY like that with a Senate race -- unless you count the highly bogus technique of a TV attack ad, which depends entirely on the massive fundraising that precludes that sort of grassroots work. Let's be clear -- you're attacking the Tea Party for exemplifying what you hallucinate you're opposing, OR, if you want to take the opposite side, for epitomizing the kind of astroturf cover that you're actually defending.

Like I said, the basic motivation for repealing the 17th amendment is pure populism: Senators represent states, which are closer to the people than the Federal government. State legislators are closer to the people, with smaller electorates and a much higher voter to candidate ratio, than any US Representative or Senator, so their elections are much more retail and less dependent on spending, especially paid media like tv, the big expense for the Senate. No state legislator spends 6 years raising tens of millions to get re-elected; every Senator does.

Capisce?

Like I said, the basic motivation for repealing the 17th amendment is pure populism: Senators represent states, which are closer to the people than the Federal government.

Hey Donnelly, you know whose "closer to the people" than the states are? The people. You're seriously using a "closer to the people" argument against popular election of Senators?

(You should stick to concern trolling immigration)

I’m wondering in the event anyone knows what Canada’s immigration specifications are. As an older fart, I probably don’t have the “skills” they want. They’ll clearly see that I’m fleeing a were unable country, looking for decent health reform.