He tells Dean Kuipers at CityBeat that he still can't believe he lost the West Side city council seat, he grasps why L.A. voters would never send him to Congress ("Massachusetts or the San Francisco Bay Area would be the more natural setting") and he thinks Bush can be beaten - but not if Lieberman is the Demo nominee or if Nader runs again. Hayden is writing a book (his tenth) on gangs and the failure of policy or law enforcement to stop street violence.

Good test of the new comments era. Lots of people loathe Tom Hayden and his politics, some admire him. Fine, we all know that -- now what about this interview? I found his pessimism about the Democrats interesting, and thought it revealing (of what I'm not sure) that he's puzzled Tom Hayden would lose to Jack Weiss. Thought it might have been the most readable of the interviews so far in the new CityBeat. Here's the link.