Tom Hayden Predicts Obama Will Lose
DENVER -- Speaking at a luncheon hosted by the Denver Press Club at the Denver Athletic Club today, former California state legislator and '60s political activist Tom Hayden predicted that Barack Obama will lose the 2008 Election. "An African-American candidate talking about economics and a white war hero -- it's clear to me who is going to win," Hayden said. When one of the attendees at the small luncheon, attended mostly by Denverites, asked him to be more specific about why he thinks Obama will lose the race, Hayden replied, "You don't think McCain's gonna have a convention about his being an American." Hayden seemed to be referring to the fact that Barack Obama continues to introduce himself to the American electorate. Hayden elaborated. "I've known kookie Cokie, kookie Cokie Roberts for years, but when Obama vacationed in Hawaii, she said, "He shoulda gone to Myrtle Beach." Hayden turned out his hands, as if to say what're you gonna do?
Hayden went further. "[Obama's] problem is that he's lived in the world of beating the Democratic establishment for so long, it's hard to transition to being the Democratic establishment." Hayden is part of the group Progressives for Obama, but he has his issues with the candidate. "There's the pursuit of the last white man standing in Pennsylvania," he said, rather than a fierce pursuit of the Latino vote, which is what Hayden would like to see.
Given Hayden's history of confrontation with the police, famously at the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968, perhaps it's not surprising that Hayden has a generally dark view. Much of his talk, which was advertised as an introduction to his new book A Tom Hayden Reader, centered on the police presence at the convention in Denver. Since the 1999 Seattle protests against the WTO, Hayden said that there has been "a continuous police build-up that concerns me since then." The brother of an old friend who lives on Denver's 16th Street Mall told Hayden that "he had never seen anything like it before"--that the police presence there is overwhelming, intimidating and edgy.
Apparently, the police have said that they have hundreds of weapons stored next to the mall, and that they bring them out every night and return them to their secret cache in the morning. Or anyway that's what the brother has confided to Tom Hayden. "All these horses on the mall -- it's like St. Petersburg 1905," Hayden said. The Denver Police Department has received $50 million from the Department of Homeland Security, according to Hayden. What concerns him is not only the massive police presence at the convention (the cop who spilled the beans about the weapons cache is convinced that something is going to happen here) but also the newly purchased technology, which will be used "in the barrio" long after the Democrats are gone. When Hayden says that the police create "an imaginary argument with your mind and with your nervous system," he almost seems to have made the point.
There's no need for so many police in Denver, Hayden says. "With Obama having opposed the war, there's no real reason for demonstrations." Hayden also feels that the "radicals of the 60s don't get credit for what has happened for good in the Democratic Party." He thinks there's too much harkening back to 1968. "All this talk about '68 because we have a fascination with round numbers," he quips. "Our country is full of the wreckage of the 60s."
Hayden observes that "there is a new social movement on a vast scale" centered right now in the Obama Campaign. "These young people will plant seeds for the next twenty-five years." But they are "small-d" Democrats, Hayden says, and they are environmentalists and idealists. "They don't want a war in :Pakistan!" And "if Obama loses, which I think he might," Hayden says, nevertheless the Democratic Party will have grown bigger. As for Obama, "he is losing. He is gonna lose the electoral college."
Hayden does offer a taste of Obama hope. "He gets one more chance to reboot, re-orient, redeploy." He offers the example of the Obama ad campaign on the McCain houses as a primer on how rebooting works these days. According to Hayden, some young investigators financed by Brave New Films in Los Angeles went to Arizona and filmed all the McCain homes and put the video on Youtube. Although the video went viral, nothing happened politically until a reporter from Politico saw it and then had a chance to ask John McCain himself the now-famous number question. Only then, Hayden reminded us, did the Obama team jump on. "Outsiders triggering situations -- that's the only way to win."
For more Huffington Post coverage from the Democratic National Convention, visit our Politics @ the DNC page, our Democratic Convention Big News Page, and our HuffPost bloggers' Twitter feed, live from Denver.
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I have met a lot of older Democrats that are extremely cynical. I think it would be hard for them not to be cycnical. They remember the assasinations of JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, and have seen the ugliest underbelly of racist America, Watergate, and the total corruption of the US government.
With the last two elections basically stolen, a bogus war in Iraq, etc., they don't expect things to change anytime soon.
The younger generation of progressives choose to believe the system can still work, and that this country is not as racist as it once was. I HOPE we're right this time, and Hayden and company are wrong.
The younger generation does see that more of the same is going to kill their futures. Now, will they get themselves and their friends to the voting both IS the question for 2008.
I think Tom Hayden is right that Obama won't win. I personally think is as qualified as anyone who ever ran for the office and that he would make an excellent President. What a relief it would be to once again have someone who can talk in complete, coherent sentences at the least. But look at the polls. If he only maintains the kind of lead he has now, come election day McCain will ultimately take it. The United State has devolved into a NASCAR nation, and McSame is just the kind of Ricky Bobby candidate the Rove-Republican horsecrap machine knows that a decisive number of Americans prefer.
Obama's been in the news on a near-daily basis since the beginning of the year. Anyone who cares to make the effort to find out about him has already made up their minds. If polls don't start showing Obama with a consistent 60 percent lead over McCain, I wouldn't give him a snowball's chance in hell of winning.
Is this the same 60's war protester, who was married to Hanoi Jane Fonda? Get a little age on yourself, investments, public office and you turned republican Tom Hayden?
Obama/Biden 08
The pattern you describe is exactly what I have seen personally. Some of my boyhood friends who were hardened "liberals" became hardcore Republicans when they made money. There is a correlation there.
I never changed with the change that came, except that I was able to help more.
Learn to read. He didn't endorse McCain. He said he thought he would win. That's not the same thing. He said he supports Obama. Lots of comprehension impaired posters today.
You can execute actions to deal with a situation you are not facing or you can act to confront situations you do face. The choice is always as clear as being able to see the situation you face. Mr. Hayden thinks that Mr. Obama is not taking the right approach and therefore he may (will) lose. Losing remains a possibility for any one of us having a win or lose proposition before them. Winning is not guaranteed for any and winning is subjective. One nominees’ marginalized White House with Hillary Clinton as VP undermining his agenda is another mans’ White House with Joe Biden on the team to provide the wisdom of his experience and yet open to change because he realizes the urgency of now and that it is bigger than his ego. Winning may be someone making a hard stand for minorities and those impoverished and drawing a line in the sand about all things military. Winning can also be realizing the flavor of America in terms of its component ethnic parts, and utilizing your campaign to speak to the numbers because you have faith your agenda will address all concerns. You realize if you are not elected we will all be concerned when John McCain grabs power. By the way, that is what John McCain’s candidacy represents -- a grab for power not a credible promise of leadership, he is simply someone to fill in the vacuous void of an exiting Bush. He is a Bush placeholder.
Obama just isn't the right candidate. He started out looking so rock starrish and now he is going the way of the rock star. One day you are king next day the new kids on the block are out with a new album and no one knows your name. He was style over substance and he isn't wearing well. The public has good instincts and trying to explain to them that Obama and Mich are real americans causes more anxiety than anything else. I think some members of this party got too excited over a perception and then reality set in. He reminds me of all the warning contained in "Brave New World" and "1984"
You are an army of one on this site, Bud.
Barack is the ONLY candidate running with ideas that will get us out of disaster created by the Bush administration. The republicans are responsible for leading our country near the abyss and McCain is sure to push us into it. If we elect a republican you can reserve our country a seat at the table for the league of third world nations.
Look at that, a whole paragraph without POW!
What's not wearing well is the travesty of the Bu$h administration.
You repubs can't stop us this time. Even if your vote fraud team works overtime.
Cheat and smear all you like, we will not be denied.
This is OUR year!
"If Obama loses, America deserves the misery that'll surely come next."...This is the kind of comment that makes me boil...what the hell is going to happen to us...we survived Bush and we survived WW2 and Vietnam, but if the blessed Obama is not anointed we Americans will be thrust into misery? Some of you people are loaded with venom and it is coming out and becoming apparent to the public and that is why Obama is losing, you are scaring people with your threats. If Obama loses we know what happens next. The sun rises, the sun sets, summer, winter, spring and fall continue. Whew!!!
If McCain wins, America deserves the misery that will likely come next. That is the way I say it. I know Mr. Obama is an extraordinary man, but still just a man. He is susceptible to losing this election by character assassination, or actual assassination. This puts your argument to bed. No one thinks this man is a messiah and your rhetoric betrays your motivation. This ain’t no wide-eyed affair for me. It is a realization born in my own heart that something about now may be different than any other now we have faced. The moving parts are far more complex. If you do not believe this, look at the housing crisis, which in part is due to complex financial instruments and how it becomes difficult to manage monsters we create.
I was feeling as I do concerning nation before the emergence of this election and Mr. Obama’s candidacy. I support Obama, because of all the candidates; he said the words that spoke to the feeling that now requires a different approach than what I have seen thus far. He poses the question; can we continue to stand as a house divided? His candidacy speaks to this question. His policies are consistent with a leader of vision having empathetic concern for the citizenry. I can then look to what he brings beyond position papers.
The people who are scared have been scared a long time and they have historically scared others by how they have voted. It’s scary!
"We survived Bush..."
Not yet. And probably not at all. He has done SO MUCH damage that it may be and probably is not undoable. When the entire U.S. economy goes -- and it should happen pretty soon -- that will be all she wrote, and we will not have survived Bush.
Keep dreaming. Obama is winning and that is what has your republican panties in a bunch.
Fear and smear, that's all you got.
Fool!
I don't think we have survived Bush. The bottom has yet to fall out. The enormous problems we face have yet to be confronted.
Ask the residents of New Orleans if they survived Bush. Ask the dead Iraqis if they survived Bush. Ask the people who are losing their homes and jobs if they survived Bush.
If Obama loses, we all lose.
With McSame as POTUS our future is bleak, at best.
I totally agree. Our country cannot afford for Obama to loose. The world sure hopes he doesn't loose.
And I was just wondering how many of the PUMAs are amongst those that were/are "pissed off" at Ralph Nader over the 2000 election?
What? Every smart, educated person knows that the Supreme court and corrupt republican government handed GB the election.
At least make an effort.
Can someone answer me why GB and his cronies aren't in jail for stealing the election? Why aren't people outraged at the level of corruption that's been going on with W's administration? Why are so many people, after the country apparently complains about W, still voting for McCain?
Am I doing too much by trying to apply logic?
Man, what a dolt I am. Here I was laboring under the illusion that the conventions marked the end of the primaries and the beginning of the general election; and, we still had about two and a half months to go. However, it would seem that the general election is to be held this weekend, or maybe it is the day after the Republican convention.
I'm just so confused!
Didn't he lose his own election some time back? I guess that makes him an expert in losing.
This guy from the 60's makes it sound like that the choice Obama made for vacation is the sole reason he will lose and yeah the fact that there are too cops in Denver, he acts like Obama is solely responsable for those as well. Give me a break. You will always have those who want to disrupt and will be wherever there is a gathering. I call them the stuck in the 60's crowd. Their only thought is to cause a problem. Period end of story!!!
Yeah, I remember back in November, Tom Hayden was predicting that 0bama would lose the nomination. How did that work out for ya, Tom?
He's such a good predictor, based on past results!!
Well the Clinton's thought they had nothing to worry about either, but we see where that got them.
Hayden is the has-been poster boy for the crazed Boomers of the Sixties whose stupid antics in Chicago guaranteed the election of Nixon, and the forty years of conservative politics the nation has suffered since. Obama's great goal is to sweep both left- and right-wing Boomers off the board of American politics, in order to create a new politics of reasoned, mature, Gen-X consensus which might actually end America's forty-year political gridlock and get something DONE.
Leave it to Fowler to find this guy!
The problem is Tom Hayden.
Democrats could have gotten a ham sandwich elected this year had they run anyone but the Most Liberal Senator in America. if he were the most Conservative Republican, he would be called an extremist and much worse on these very pages.
Democrats don't seem to understand the split in their party between the left the the moderates.
Most liberal Senator? 1. Being Liberal isn't a bad thing, Regan just made you think so.
2. Where the hell do you get this stuff? Most Liberal Senator? Your kidding me, right?
Obama is rated as the most liberal. The Republicans can thank their stars they're running against Democrats -- the self sabotuers.
If you think Obama is liberal, you ain't from this planet.
Instead of worrying about what Tom Hayden says, we the American people should be asking some questions of McCain. I notice he has sent his wife to Georgia. Apparently he has very close ties to this country. What will he do as President if Russia goes into Georgia or Ukraine? In todays papers Bush doesn't want us to leave by 2011 despite Iraq's President's wish that we do so. McCain says we will stay until we win. What does he mean by winning? How are we going to pay for these wars? Who is going to fight them? The American people need to know just what to expect from a McCain presidency. If they decide to elect him because his party waves the flag more or McCain was a POW in the Vietnam War, or they don't want to elect a brown man, then they get what they deserve. I look forward to seeing their children and grandchildren on the front lines. Americans will be paying for these wars for a long time. Instead of making predictions, Tom Hayden should be asking these questions and others.
"I notice he has sent his wife to Georgia. Apparently he has very close ties to this country. "
She goes everywhere, of her own will. Last month she was in Rwanda, Vietnam, and Thailand. She was in Iraq right after the first Gulf War bringing humanitarian aid. She likes to be where the action is as far as humanitarian crises.
that's where all the free pharmaceuticals can be "liberated"
No offense Tom but chasing the latino vote ain't gonna help with PA, Ohio, and Michigan.
Oh yeah and Obama will win.
Obama already HAS the latino vote.
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