California Miserable

Thursday, October 9, 2025

My wife and I are headed back to California in a few weeks to look in on friends and loved ones for a few days.  As much as we love and care for those we will visit, the trip still remains troublesome to contemplate.  Now, finally, I have a way to explain it in a nutshell.  It was big news yesterday.

California poll leading gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter has suffered some leaks in the last 24-36 hours.  Leaks that are, to say the least, uncomplimentary.  There are a couple of video clips.  They have been all over, but this Instapundit post features both for your reference.  That the woman had a temper is old news for veteran California watchers.  But until now she seemed to reserve it for private situations.  Describing her is difficult without resorting to profanity, which she is apparently quite adept at herself.  She is just a miserable human being.  To call her a “diva” is to do disservice to divas everywhere.

The problem is she is somewhat representative of the state.  And now you know why we contemplate a trip to California with some trepidation.  Of course, not everyone in California is this miserable and ugly, but the percentage of such miserable souls in California beats the national average by a long shot.  Which makes the odds of a daily encounter with at least one such soul pretty doggone high.

In some sense, such misery in California is understandable.  They regulate every aspect of your life.  They control the volume of your television.  They insist your landlord give you a refrigerator.  They tax at an exorbitant rate, and then insist on raising the cost of school lunches so they “need” to tax you even more.  And then they adopt foreign holidays because goodness knows, those “overworked, unpaid” state employees need more paid time off.  If you live in California you are going to be prickly and miserable to some extent because someone is always pushing, prodding and forcing you to do something against your will.

But Katie Porter raises the bar for prickly and miserable, or does she?  The rumors still swirl about Kamala Harris.

I’ll be interested to see if these leaked videos affect her polling.  I have my doubts they will move much since she is, as I say, somewhat representative.  I’ll be even more interested to see if it gives Republican candidate Steve Hilton, who currently polls in second, a boost.  It’s way early and if she can get the lid back on her campaign, this’ll likely all blow over before voters are paying much attention.

All of which is just sad for the state where I spent several decades.  The good people of California, which are growing fewer and fewer as the great migration continues, deserve better.