New York Times columnist and unofficial Bush family psychologist Maureen Dowd is out selling her new book, Bushworld. I saw her on Real Time with Bill Maher and, man does she look uncomfortably out of her element; she seems very awkward and almost at pains to answer interview questions. For someone who has been reading her clever and elegant writing for years, her interviews are an abrupt and startling contrast.
Dowd’s interview presence, however, is not the point of my present musings. Rather, it is who I discovered is reading Dowd’s book and what that may mean for the presidential contest.
On Saturday I found myself hanging out with a guy I have had drinks with on occasion and who is not in the least bit political. He’s a normal blue collar guy who voted for Jesse Ventura in 1998 because Jesse "told it like it is" and who rarely talks politics, and certainly doesn’t bring it up on his own accord.
On Saturday, however, I was fascinated to hear him bring up the fact that he’s reading Dowd’s new book on GW. Dowd’s readership are by and large liberal-leaning political junkies, not this friend of mine. Further, he was also talking about how he was trying to "turn" co-workers to vote for John Kerry.
It is yet another anecdote that would seem to indicate the President Bush is creating new Democratic voters.