It should.

Way back in 2008, California voters passed a proposition to build the nation’s first high-speed rail system.

California taxpayers agreed to spend $9.95 billion for a high speed rail line connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles. It was supposed to be finished by 2020 and estimated to cost about $33 billion in total, with private investments making up the difference.

It’s now 2026. No such line exists. No high-speed passenger service is running. A measly 2,000 feet of rail has been laid to date despite the fact that $15 billion dollars has already been spent on the project.

What have Californians gotten for their tax dollars and vote of good faith?

The original estimate was $33 billion for the entire line, with private investments making up the bulk of it. Estimates have since exploded to $128 billion, several orders of magnitude higher than California taxpayers agreed to spend.

The project is years — and likely decades — behind the original estimate of 2020. Experts now advise Californians not to expect to ride a high-speed rail passenger train until at least 2030 — and that’s only if things go to plan.

As things haven’t gone to plan on this project since it was approved in 2008, that deadline seems just as unlikely as the last, to say the least.

California officials are full of excuses as to why this project has become an albatross hanging around the neck of taxpayers. They blame detailed design work, which wasn’t finished before contruction started and caused expensive changes later. They say the acquisition of land has been hamstringed by lawsuits.

They blame the difficultly in obtaining building permits, inadequate staffing, complexity. They even blame Donald Trump, who clawed back a paltry $4 billion in unspent federal grants because the state hadn’t met any deadlines on this project as of 2025.

2025.

California Democrats blame everyone but themselves. No one is more anxious to pass the buck than California Governor Gavin Newsom. 

In reality, California’s nonexistent high-speed railway is possibly the most poorly managed large-scale project in U.S. history.

Officials say construction started before designs were finalized, but that is project management 101. They blame California geography — mountains, dense urban centers, seismic standards — but those were all known challenges from the beginning that were dramatically underestimated, probably for the purposes of convincing Californians to vote for the proposition in 2008.

Federal funding was never stable and no serious private investors ever showed up. Is it any wonder? Not everyone likes to waste billions of dollars on high speed railways that never go anywhere.

Investors don’t like “maybe in 20 years.”

Considering that other nations have functioning high speed railways, including Japan and France, California’s high speed rail fiasco is even more embarrasing.

Lately, even prominent progressives have begun criticizing the project — and Gov. Gavin Newsom. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, who published “Abundance” last year are two of them.

“We haven’t made enough public infrastructure because we’ve gotten used to process over delivery… we tell ourselves apocalyptic narratives of the future instead of solving problems we know how to solve,” said Ezra Klein. 

“Nothing about this project is technological — the delays and costs are political and procedural,” he admitted. “Projects like high-speed rail cost what they cost because negotiating with every stakeholder — courts, homeowners, utilities, regulators — has become an art of delaying rather than building.”

After admitting that “Abundance” presented a “damning picture of liberal governance,” Gov. Newsom went right back to 1.) defending the project and 2.) blaming Donald Trump.

Progressives may not like Donald Trump, but he isn’t an official in the state of California. In addition, this boondoggle preceded Donald Trump’s entrance into politics by almost 10 years.

And California’s high speed rail isn’t the only abysmal failure perpetrated on taxpayers by their government.

California is spending more than ever on homelessness; homelessness has never been worse. $42 billion dollars were earmarked to expand rural broadband internet access in 2020. It hasn’t resulted in expanded internet access for anyone.

$7.5 billion was allocated for an EV charging network in 2020. To date, not one single EV charging station has been built.

Republicans have been criticizing California’s governance for years. Now, the call is coming from inside the house.

“Even when Democrats fully fund priorities they believe in, the way they design programs almost guarantees failure to deliver,” Ezra Klein told Jon Stewart on a recent episode of the latter’s talk show.

The bottom line: If voters experience government as something that announces big numbers but delivers nothing tangible, they will stop trusting progressive governance — even if they like progressive goals.

Despite these abject failures, Gov. Gavin Newsom still wants to be president. He has threatened to unleash his vision of progressive governance on the rest of the country.

That is rich considering that California is losing taxpayers by the moving truck load.

For years, residents and businesses have been leaving the state, citing high taxes, high costs, and chronically poor governance — from housing and energy to infrastructure failures like high-speed rail. 

This isn’t just anecdotal. Executives, entrepreneurs, and ordinary middle- and upper-income residents have said publicly that California has become too expensive and too dysfunctional to justify staying.

After the 2020 Census, California lost a congressional seat for the first time in its history, largely due to people leaving the state. Many observers argued that this loss understated the broader exodus — and that California may lose 4 seats by 2030.

What makes the situation remarkable is how far it has gone: the problem is now so acute that Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration has aggressively pursued former residents for taxes even after they’ve left the state. That posture doesn’t signal confidence — it signals a government scrambling to hold onto a shrinking tax base after years of policy choices that drove people away.

Democratic Party voters may someday have the chance to vote in a real, honest-to-goodness, competitive Democratic Party presidential primary for the first time since 2008…in 2028. They should think long and hard before selecting Gavin Newsom to be the progressive standard bearer.

He is governing California right into the ground.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)