**Due to an error on my part this only went to paid subscribers this morning, so I’m resending it to everyone because I don’t know how to fix the problem otherwise. So my apologies to those who are seeing this a second time today. Although it’s worth watching a second time. **
Yes, you can read the substance of Jon’s “rant” below. But you’re missing out if you don’t watch or listen to it. He was pissed.
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⏱️ 5-minute read
The Debate Was A Mess. The Status Quo Won.
A Debate With No Adult In The Room
I had barely turned off the California gubernatorial debate before recording my reaction. And I will be blunt: it was painful to watch.
This was not a serious debate. It was not a useful debate. It was not a clarifying debate. It looked, at times, like seven people had been handed microphones and told to talk over each other until the clock ran out.
That is unfortunate, because California has real problems. Housing is unaffordable. Homelessness is out of control. Energy costs are punishing families. Crime remains a major concern. Businesses are leaving. Middle-class families are being squeezed. People are moving to states where they believe the American Dream is still within reach.
And the overwhelming likelihood is that one of the Democrats on that stage will be the next governor of California.
That should concern every voter who watched.
The moderators — Colleen Williams, Conan Nolan, and Enrique Chiabra — tried to raise serious issues. I give them credit for that. But the format failed them. The candidates ran over the rules, grabbed extra time, interrupted, argued, and turned the debate into a food fight. By the end, the impression was unavoidable: there was no adult in the room.
The result was no insight. It was exhaustion.
The Same Failed Formula
The real problem is not just that the debate was chaotic. The real problem is that most of the candidates were offering different versions of the same failed ideology.
California has been controlled by liberal Democrats for a very long time. If you count the Legislature, we are talking about generations of one-party dominance in Sacramento. And after all of that control, what is the solution offered for nearly every problem?
More taxes. More fees. More regulations. More government. More wealth redistribution.
And when those policies create more problems, the proposed solution is — somehow — even more taxes, more fees, more regulation, and more government.
That is the loop California is stuck in.
You could see it on stage. Tom Steyer wants the government to grow faster and more aggressively. He talks about closing loopholes and extracting tens of billions of dollars from businesses, as though those costs will not trickle down into higher prices, fewer jobs, and less investment. Xavier Becerra remains far to the left, still committed to a worldview in which government should be bigger, broader, and more involved in nearly every part of life. Katie Porter came across as condescending and combative, lecturing others as though the debate stage were her personal hearing room.
Matt Mahan tries to sound moderate, and he certainly has a different demeanor. But when you drill down, he still seems to accept much of the same big-government framework. He may not be rushing to raise taxes in every sentence, but he still wants to operate within a system built around government programs, planning, and solutions.
That is the problem. The Democratic candidates may differ in tone, style, and intensity. But they are operating from the same basic premise: government should do more, control more, spend more, and manage more.
The Format Failed The Voters
If anyone “won” the debate, it was the status quo.
I do not believe undecided Californians who tuned in trying to figure out who should lead the state came away with much useful information. The debate was too crowded, too chaotic, and too dominated by soundbites and interruptions.
This is not how voters learn what candidates actually believe.
Maybe these debates need to stop being staged this way. Put candidates in one-on-one interviews. Pair them up two or three at a time. Give them longer exchanges. Let voters hear actual answers instead of watching a bumper-car version of politics.
The current format rewards the worst instincts in politics. It rewards the gotcha line. It rewards the interruption. It rewards the candidate willing to talk over everyone else. It rewards performance over substance.
That is exactly what is wrong with politics today.
One of the reasons I started So, Does It Matter? is that I believe there is still value in long-form political analysis. Not everything important can be reduced to a soundbite. Not every serious issue can be answered in 45 seconds. Voters deserve to understand what candidates believe about the issues that actually matter.
That did not happen in this debate.
Even the candidates I disagree with deserve to be evaluated on the basis of substantive answers. They all have something to say. They all deserve the chance to explain their views. But in this format, none of that came through clearly. It was noise layered on top of noise.
And so nothing changed.
So, Does It Matter?
California does not need more political theater. It needs a serious break from the policies that have driven the state into its current condition.
Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco were the two Republicans on the stage, and unsurprisingly, they were the candidates most clearly arguing that California needs a fundamentally different direction. They were not just offering a slightly different management style. They were challenging the failed assumptions behind decades of one-party rule.
Antonio Villaraigosa, for the second debate in a row, came across as the adult on the Democratic side. I disagree with him on plenty, but he at least seemed to understand the need for seriousness. Mahan may have had moments where he could have sounded reasonable, but his mild style was swallowed by the chaos around him.
That is the tragedy of these debates. The noise buries whatever substance might exist.
Meanwhile, the broader philosophical divide remains clear. California’s liberal governing class has run the state into the ground, and its only real answer is to pour more gasoline on the fire. More government. More planning. More centralized solutions. More redistribution. More control.
That is not what made America work.
The states gaining population are often the ones that embrace greater individual liberty, economic freedom, and personal responsibility. The states losing people are the ones where the government has made the dream harder to reach by consuming more of the resources families need to build their own futures.
California voters deserved better than what they got in this debate.
They deserved clarity. They deserved seriousness. They deserved to hear how these candidates would actually change a state that is failing in too many basic categories.
Instead, they got chaos.
And when chaos prevents voters from seeing a real alternative, the status quo wins.
You can listen to Jon’s rant on the debate here:
Or watch it (or share it) on YouTube here.
