03-18-2019, 12:35 AM
In principle. In practice, how would it improve the character of our senators? Because if it doesn’t improve the character of the Senate, then it is really an empty gesture. I think about a state like Texas, which I think would probably send John Cornyn any way to the Senate, because of the connectedness of it all and they’re penchant for promoting their own. In California, would the legislature do a better job of picking the senators from that state than the people? It’s hard to imagine that they could do worse. But would they have the filibuster? If they did have one, then it could be used to stop the promotion of highly incendiary persons such as Kamala Harris from being promoted, but the same filibuster could be used to prevent people like Rand Paul from serving if enough Dems were able to suppress his confirmation. I also wonder if men of honor on the other side like Joe Manchin could get in there or if in blue states it would just be all communist all the time. It definitely raises a lot of questions and it would seem just from considering the possibilities that it would lead to a greatly moderated Senate except in really red and really blue states. But moderates in most cases are just ordinary people lacking principles. Also, if moderate means moderate like David Souter than we’d be in for a real mess. I think for every Kamala Harris and Sherrod Brown we’d dodge, we’d also lose a Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. We’d probably get a lot more Marco Rubios and John McCains.
