Matt, very interesting article but I find it a little bit of a stretch (and a "little" insulting) to say that if one does not like the 17th Amendment then they must also be against women's right to vote in the 15th amendment. You should be careful. Statements like those really don't make your articles stronger, they make them weaker by ensuring that a reader on the fence stops reading dead in their tracks.
(Doug is referring here to my latest magazine column, on the Republican argument against health care, in which I said this: "Representative Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, suggested last month that it might be time to eliminate the direct election of senators and let state legislatures choose them instead, as they did before the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913. Perhaps he’d like to roll back women’s suffrage while he’s at it." I'll post it on the site shortly.)
Doug, this may surprise you to know, but my editor and I had a fairly detailed conversation about the very point you've raised. It wasn't an argument, by any means: we were just talking through whether it was fair to connect the two things, even sarcastically. In the end, we decided it was, because women's suffrage and the direct election of senators came out of the same progressive reform agenda in the early part of the last century, and if you opposed one, you very likely opposed the other. The main point here is that it's foolish to suggest we should roll back the clock to a time when voters had less freedom and power generally.
That said, I could argue it your way as well. So while I think I'm right, I don't reject your point. Thanks for writing.
on April 11, 2010
