So close, yet so far away

I think you're saying that you're okay with how the electors are chosen now, but you want all 50 states & DC to have no requirements or restrictions on how they vote.

Bingo, and, most importantly, there is no popular presidential election. Then the President stops being a de facto monarch crossed with some kind of rock star celebrity. He just goes back to being the head of the executive branch.

Doing it that way would make nearly all the states worthy of a candidate's time & attention.

You're still missing the point, and now you're adding this equalitarian nonsense in. The problem is direct democracy, you cannot fix it by adding more democracy. The popularity contest is what draws in all the corruption and tyranny. The popular election of the President has to be eliminated and the Electoral College has to operate completely independent of any large scale participatory democratic process.

...but the districts now are drawn in such a way that there's hardly any truly competitive races anymore.

Maybe so, but that has nothing to do with whether Senators should be elected by popular vote. The purpose of the Senate is not to represent the people, so more of this equalitarian silliness is completely non sequitur. The purpose of the Senate is to represent the states and their interests to the Congress. It makes no difference whether local legislatures are appointed by barons and counts or by jousting tournaments, Senators should not be elected by popular vote.

Can't we treat the symptom and attempt to fix the problem at the same time???

Oh come on, Andy. That's like offering a cough drop to a man with lung cancer. What's the point? Changing the President's term would be no simpler than reinstating the Electoral College and repealing the Seventeenth Amendment, so why waste time doing it?