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Notes -
I agree, from a Watsonian perspective, it does make sense. Slytherin is written as rotten to the core with no redeeming qualities. Blood purity is shown to have no impact on a wizard's power since it's a heavy-handed metaphor for class in Britain, so their focus on it makes them look stupid. It's not even the case that they fell from grace or lost their way over time, as their founder was demonstrably just as evil if not more. They would attract only dumb brutes and the few elite sociopaths who use them for power.
Out of universe... making Slytherin all of those things was a deliberate choice. The story would have really benefited from the gang making a Slytherin friend down the line, possibly in Dumbledore's Army. Even in the later books, when Rowling seems to have misgivings about casting an entire fourth of the people in her world as irredeemably evil, none of the Slytherin students choose to stand with Hogwarts when push comes to shove.
Interesting to think about the counterfactual, but at the end of the day these started out as children's books, and struggling single mother Rowling probably didn't have much room for empathy for British aristocrats when she wrote them.
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