it's not, but framers did not understand themselves to be establishing a democratic gov't, but a republican one by which they generally meant a gov't without a monarch and which Madison specifically called a gov't 'in which the scheme of representation takes place' (*Federalist #10)... M asserts in #10 that the constitution is intended to preserve the 'spirit and form' of popular gov't while reducing its substance...
recall Madison's concern with 'faction' in #10 and the comment that has him sounding like a bourgeois marxist:
'the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.'
this follows M's assertion in previous paragraph that:
'the first object of government....is the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property.'
Madison is also a useful guide regarding the 'scheme' of representation, both in #10 and in #62...
in #10, he distinguishes democracy from a republic by reference to 'the delegation of government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest' and by the 'greater number of citizens and greater sphere of country over which the latter may be extended'...second point is crucial in that M asserts that a large republic will have more varied interests making it more difficult for majority to 'invade the rights of other citizens'...
Madison takes up the Senate in #62 where he asserts that an advantage of the Senate 'is the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation' and the security it offers against 'usurpation or perfidy'...M goes on to say that the Senate will protect against 'the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions'...
in other words, a smaller and non-elected upper assembly in which members serve long terms will be a safeguard against attacks on private property by a majority of directly elected lower assembly ih which members serve short terms...
muckraking Progressive George Norris (I think that was his name) led a successful move to abolish Nebraska's bi-cameral legislature in 1934... he argued that upper houses were modelled after the House of Lords and, thus, intended mainly to represent wealthy people...others have argued that a one-house legislature can operate more efficiently because it eliminates the need for conference committees...
ten (if memory serves) additional states placed unicameral proposals on statewide ballots between the 1930 and 1970s but each was voted down... Madison's arguments for 'check and balances' and impeding 'hasty passage of poorly conceived bills' would appear to have become 'tradition'....
Michael Hoover