"The reason we didn't have direct democracy before is because it wasn't practical before " Is simply not true. Why did we (and by we I mean land owning white m

"The reason we didn't have direct democracy before is because it wasn't practical before " Is simply not true. Why did we (and by we I mean land owning white men) vote for congressmen directly but not senators or the president? Obviously the mechanism for voting was in place, but they did not use it for 2 of the 3 federal offices. They were specifically trying to distance the choice of president and senators from the poeple. It was only later that the voting base was expanded, people started voting directly for senators and the president (and technically, it's still a little indirect to the president).