Blue-collar vote: over eight years Michigan has lost more than 300,000 jobs Jobs are short, money is tight and voters may be ready for change, writes Anne Hull, in Detroit, Michigan
PAM FLECK has just finished vacuuming and scrubbing her mobile home into perfection when her phone rings. It's her sister, Sherry. Sherry lives over in Brighton. She drives a school bus, likes to hunt and votes Republican.
"Hi," says Fleck, an assistant manager at a Dollar General convenience store. Her mind is on the 18-wheel delivery truck she'll have to unload at work later that night. Lifting cases of bleach takes its toll at the age of 55.
Sherry is on the phone talking politics, trying one more time to talk sense into her sister. Anyone who votes for Barack Obama will not be welcome in her house - a joke, but Fleck knows exactly where her younger sister stands. She takes a sip of coffee. "Yeah, I'm still listening," she says.
If Obama gets in, Sherry says, he will take away everyone's guns and control what roads they can and cannot drive on.
Fleck interrupts. "We are not going to be able to afford any guns to shoot or cars to drive on the roads if things don't change, Sherry, honest to God."
With no pension and sore legs from seven-hour shifts at Dollar General, Fleck is what political pollsters classify as "working-class," "blue-collar" or a "disaffected Democrat". She is white, skipped college for motherhood and considers herself a Democrat, but did not vote in the last two presidential elections because both Al Gore and John Kerry left her cold.
Fleck is the kind of voter that Obama needs to win in November, but has struggled to persuade. She's ready to roll the dice.
To understand why - and to understand Obama's widening lead over McCain in a crucial state - is to see an American worker pushed to desperation.
A Wall Street bailout for $700 billion? After six years at Dollar General, Fleck earns $10.35 (€7.60) an hour and receives an annual raise of 25 cents.
Michigan is in its eighth year of a ransacked economy that has lost 322,000 manufacturing jobs during that time. The state's unemployment rate is 8.9 per cent, the highest in the nation. The Pew Charitable Trust is predicting that one of every 36 homes in Michigan will fall under foreclosure by next year. The evidence is everywhere. Fleck's son tells her that poachers are stripping metal and copper from abandoned houses.
Fleck grabs her cigarettes and goes out to sit in the warm sun of a late-breaking autumn. "You don't have to have a college degree to see what's going on," she says. The situation calls for a leap of faith. "Maybe he'll really make a go of it," she says of Obama. "Maybe he'll say, 'Look past me and see what I do'."
Sometimes Fleck wavers, and this fragile commitment suggests his path to the White House is far from certain. "They keep saying we need a change," she says. "Well, this is definitely going to be a change. He's young and he's black." But on most days she's sure. "I'm 55 years old. I don't like the way the world is going."
For every Obama believer swept up in a sea of "Change" bumper stickers, there are others who are tentative, whose slow gravitation is a radical act.
The conversion is not shared across her family.
There's Sherry. "She said she doesn't like the way Obama was raised and the whole business with his church," Fleck says. "She was talking about his religion. Something about his stepbrother, who lives wherever. This is stuff that I didn't know about."
And there's the man she has been dating for the last few years, who works on prototype cars for Ford. "He's not real happy about Obama being black," Fleck says. "I said to him, 'Close your eyes and what do you see?'" But it is an impossible sell.
Until a week ago, Oakland County in suburban Detroit, where Fleck lives, was called the battleground of the battleground for the 2008 election: a must-win county in a must-win state. A mix of astonishing affluence, blue-collar workers, new immigrants from India and Japan, townships with 20 per cent Jewish populations and a growing African-American middle class, Oakland is known for its independent and swing voters. For that reason, McCain based a regional headquarters in Oakland, and Obama positioned seven of his 49 state offices here.
Then came the economic apocalypse, and almost overnight the race changed. Last week's polls showed Obama pulling ahead by nine points; McCain suspended campaign operations in Michigan to focus efforts elsewhere. If Michigan is any kind of barometer for Ohio and Pennsylvania - both crucial states in the Rust Belt and replete with blue-collar workers and union retirees - the transcendent issue of the economy could nudge tentative Democrats toward Obama. But not all.
Clayton Taylor is a 26-year-old Democrat who lives in Oakland County's working-class section of Troy. He supports abortion rights and loved Hillary Clinton, but will not vote for Obama. He worries about the candidate's lack of experience and that he'll promote welfare. "He's gonna give too much away," said Thomas, outside fixing his porch. "There are a lot of people who will sit back and take it. He tries to be too 'We the People', like he's an average Joe. He's hiding some beliefs."
From bowling alleys to bars, the economy dominates conversation. Not the war, though Michigan has suffered 165 deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not abortion, not same-sex marriage, not national security, not terrorism. The economy.
Obama lands a populist punch with a TV ad showing McCain pledging his loyalty to American cars before a voiceover says the Republican senator owns 13 vehicles, including three foreign-made cars.
Fleck lives in the Flamingo Court trailer park at the south end of Oakland County. Her mobile home is spacious. Before Flamingo Court, Fleck was married for 31 years. Three kids. Her husband - her junior high school sweetheart - worked as an industrial mechanic with the Big Three carmakers and brought home between $1,000 and $3,000 a week with his union card.
Good money and a decent life were built on sweat, but then the marriage ended. A photo album on Fleck's coffee table shows pictures from the birth of her recent grandchild, and everyone is crowded into the hospital room - Fleck, her ex-husband, their three grown children, spouses and grandchildren. Some things have held. Others have not. Both of her sons are industrial mechanics, but the work has gone overseas. Last month, Fleck's ex-husband lost his house to foreclosure. So when a candidate uses the word "change," she is receptive, even if his name is Barack Hussein Obama.
In a nearby ranch house with a "Veterans for McCain" sign, Donnalee Eirschele (57), a former public school caretaker on disability, says: "I'm a conservative. I don't like Obama's ideas. He's going to run our economy into the ground. Obama is more for giving money to poor people, like the ones on welfare."
At a modern split-level house with an Obama sign, Derek Forney (40), an account manager for a benefits company, says: "What Bush and his party have failed to deliver on is inclusiveness." The evangelical Christian voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004. " I have a young daughter. I don't want her to grow up in a divided country."
On her day off, Fleck visits her month-old granddaughter. "Hello!" she says, rushing for the baby girl, named Ireland. "Here you go, Mom," says Nicole Patterson (29), handing over the infant. Fleck comes to life: smiling and cooing, and miles away from Dollar General. Her 31-year-old son, Kelly, is also here. The union called him with a three-day job starting the next day. "All jobs are good," he says. "They just don't last long."
Nicole's company just told her that she can't come back part-time after the baby - it has to be full-time. Her husband's job as an auto-body technician at Chrysler has slowed to nothing. Kelly gives his familiar refrain: "Stop outsourcing jobs." He won't vote in November, disillusioned by the vote-count fiasco in Florida in 2000.
Nicole, a Democrat, is leaning toward Obama. "When he speaks, it's almost inspirational and promising." Kelly laughs. "As long as he doesn't pull some ghetto-fabulous (expletive), like they did in Detroit," he says, referring to Kwame Kilpatrick, the former Detroit mayor brought down by scandal this year.
Nicole lifts up Ireland and kisses her. "I guess my big downfall is that I'm overly optimistic," she says. "I have to be. Look what's in front of me. If you don't have hope that things will get better, what's the point? God, if you don't have hope, you don't have nothin'."
The day is warm and they go outside to sit in the back garden. Fleck tells her kids that Dollar General wants her to move to another store. Nicole wishes her mother could stay home with the baby, but Fleck explains that she can't go without health insurance.
She drives home, past campaign signs and foreclosure signs. "One way or another, something is going to work out for us," she says. - (LA Times-Washington Post service)