We absolutely deserve much better HSR in the North-East Corridor, and medium-speed rail is probably viable throughout the rest of the Northeast and maybe a few routes around Chicago.
California is trickier for two reasons. First, the layout of cities is somewhat unfortunate. In terms of a linear service, Sacramento, the Bay Area, LA, and San Diego are all more or less in a line, but scheduling a linear service requires detouring over the mountains twice to reach the Bay Area and boring an underwater tunnel to head north from SF. And SF being one of the two first-tier cities in CA means that you don't want to service it on a spur.
The second issue is the geography. Going from LA to the Bay Area requires crossing at least two sets of mountain ranges. River valleys don't really help you here, and the minimum viable HSR pretty much requires connecting LA to the Bay Area. This means there's strong political pressure to kill the project as too expensive before it can show any benefits whatsoever.
California is trickier for two reasons. First, the layout of cities is somewhat unfortunate. In terms of a linear service, Sacramento, the Bay Area, LA, and San Diego are all more or less in a line, but scheduling a linear service requires detouring over the mountains twice to reach the Bay Area and boring an underwater tunnel to head north from SF. And SF being one of the two first-tier cities in CA means that you don't want to service it on a spur.
The second issue is the geography. Going from LA to the Bay Area requires crossing at least two sets of mountain ranges. River valleys don't really help you here, and the minimum viable HSR pretty much requires connecting LA to the Bay Area. This means there's strong political pressure to kill the project as too expensive before it can show any benefits whatsoever.