Blah, blah, blah.
Larry Pressler walked into a closet thinking it was an exit, and was routinely rated one of the more dimwitted members of the Senate. But he still got sh**t done for South Dakota and upheld a number of conservative principles that the voters supported. On the other side of the aisle, Patty Murray is far from a nuclear scientist, but she votes from a liberal angle, which is what people in Seattle want. So they vote for her.
When given the choice between two candidates, one conservative and one liberal, the people are going to base their vote more on the candidates' political beliefs than on any other factor. This means, of course, that both Democrats and Republicans wind up supporting candidates they know to be relatively dumb and/or corrupt people, but that doesn't mean they're
stupid -- it means they've made a decision to weigh a government that reflects their beliefs higher than a government that won't store away a few thousand bucks in a freezer every now and then.
You can talk about Rick Scott, Marco Rubio, and "insider" Dan Coats (who beat out fellow insider Brad Ellsworth) all you want, but the bottom line here is that "voters are dumb because they elected Republicans. If they were smart, they would have elected more Democrats."