Rereading the original post, it struck me that 99.99% of people have absolutely no idea of the complexity of the Western transmission grid. That's one in ten thousand, which is probably optimistic.
You have hundreds of generators all wanting to spin at various speeds, and millions of loads flowing this way and that. Pulling and pushing. The capacitor banks and reactors (as well as a lot of sophisticated electronics) are all designed to keep the grid stable, control-system-wise.
Turbine shafts have been snapped in the past by "sub-synchronous oscillations" in the grid to which they are connected. Power has oscillated clockwise around the Western "donut", and then in several minutes, turned around and flowed in the opposite direction, using up prescious transmission line ampacity. It's almost a black art keeping this whole thing running, yet everybody thinks "electricity comes from walls".
All of this is totally beyond the general population of America in general, and W-a-a-a-a-a-y-y beyond the typical Californian. They might as well presume to "understand" orbital mechanics or molecular biology.
Electricity is too precious of a commodity to be left to the government or the mob to produce and distribute.