Politics & Power Quote by Gray Davis

Davis is doing what embattled executives do best: redirect rage into a target big enough to hold it. The line is built as a pressure-release valve for a moment when Californians were staring at blackouts and price spikes and asking, bluntly, who let this happen. Instead of defending a messy regulatory reality, he offers a cleaner villain: a federal government “in bed” with energy companies, a phrase chosen for its moral heat as much as its meaning. It’s not policy language; it’s tabloid intimacy. Corruption becomes legible, almost physical.

The intent is mobilization, not nuance. “People have to join us” casts the governor as organizer-in-chief, inviting the public into a coalition rather than leaving them as customers of government services. “Fight back” turns a technical crisis into a civic conflict, shifting the arena from utility commissions and wholesale markets to something more emotionally satisfying: a brawl between ordinary residents and distant power brokers.

The subtext is also defensive. During the California electricity crisis of the early 2000s, Davis faced brutal criticism for deregulation’s unintended consequences and for appearing reactive. By pointing upward at Washington and outward at “these energy companies,” he narrows the blame radius around Sacramento. “Dropped the ball” implies incompetence; “in bed” implies complicity. Either way, the federal level is framed as both careless and captured, making state action look not just necessary but righteous.

It works because it fuses populist outrage with a specific antagonist, turning a complex market failure into a story voters can feel in their bones.