Across America: The art deco Cadillac building in downtown Detroit, once the highest in the US, has been gutted pending reconstruction. Other vestiges of the heyday of the automobile industry lie derelict, their ground floors boarded, wind whistling through shattered window panes.
The city centre feels like an abandoned war zone, haunted by a few homeless men and drug addicts, barefooted, unthreatening. A police car glides by.
On turning a corner your eyes are drawn down an urban canyon to a clutch of futuristic skyscrapers. The cylindrical mirrored tower of General Motors' world headquarters looms above. A diminutive elevated train, called the People Mover, carries passengers through this eerie juxtaposition of urban decay and resurgence.
The Rhino cafe emerges suddenly, like a clearing in a forest of wrecked buildings. This could be Europe, or California. There are outdoor tables around a red metal sculpture, and well-dressed, middle-class people sipping cocktails. This is Harmonie, like nearby Greektown a trendy enclave that sprang up during the 1990s.
William Ford (57), an African-American lawyer, his wife Pamela (48), a nurse and business school graduate who does cardiac research, and their daughter Kristin (22), a pre-med student, are enjoying an evening drink at the Rhino. Ford grew up in downtown Detroit. As they prospered, they joined the flight to the suburbs. Now Ford has a hankering to move back downtown.
"The city started to go downhill in the 1970s, with the first oil crisis," he says. "As the auto industry goes, so we go. We had a tremendous economy under Clinton; it lasted until 9/11."
Close to two-thirds of Detroit's population are African-Americans, and statistically, 90 per cent of blacks vote Democrat. But the Ford family are evidence that John Kerry cannot even take the black vote for granted. Though all three adore Bill Clinton, that loyalty has not extended to Kerry. Parents and daughter say they are certain to vote, but only Pamela has made her decision.
Michigan has lost 4.6 per cent of its jobs since Bush was elected. With a 6.8 per cent jobless rate, it is tied for the second highest unemployment level in the nation. Yet despite the flagging economy and the fact that it voted Democrat in 2000, Michigan is a battleground, or swing state, that will help determine the election.
Many Michiganders are surprisingly indulgent towards Bush's economic record. "Bush didn't bring 9/11," says William Ford. "It was brought to him. To be honest, I like some of the things George Bush has done, as far as putting people of colour in his cabinet." Ford is referring to the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and the Secretary of State, Colin Powell.
"No other president has done that," he adds. "We have a friend who was active in the Kerry campaign, and he thought they were aloof on the race issue. If you listened to Bush's speech at the New York Convention, he sounded like a Democrat on social programmes." Ford even makes excuses for Bush's Iraq blunders. "He was misled by an incompetent CIA."
However, he is angry at the squandering of the budget surplus left by Clinton. The US federal budget deficit will reach $422 billion this month. "Someone has to be held accountable," he says. And despite record-breaking government spending, the Bush administration has cut funding for the EEOC, the government body that is supposed to enforce equal opportunity legislation.
Pamela Ford listens silently to her husband's equivocation. When she finally speaks, there's anger in her voice.
"I've had four years of George Bush and I don't want him anymore," she says. "I don't think he's truthful. He's not very smart, and we're hated all over the world because of him. I was watching our kids over there in the Olympics, getting spat on and booed at. It's his fault, and it breaks my heart."
A poll taken on September 3rd showed that half of Kerry voters are voting against George Bush, whereas 80 per cent of Bush supporters are voting for him. And Kerry's supporters-by-default have little faith in his chances. "I don't think Kerry can beat him," says Pamela Ford. "A lot of people don't think Kerry can get it done."
Middle-class families such as the Fords are not suffering economically. This being Detroit, they have a brand new Chrysler Pacifica station wagon. Daughter Kristin drives her own Jeep Liberty 4 x 4 Sport. The SUV craze has brought a small boost to the US auto industry, says William Ford. "But it can't last. Not with 13 miles per gallon at $2.00 to the gallon."
In the working class suburb of Hamtramck, Stanley Palmer (37) was laid off last December. Of Polish extraction, he is part of poor, white America, severely overweight, his teeth rotted by junk food, fuming against George W. Bush.
"I'm unemployed because of Bush," Palmer says. After 10 years at an imaging data resource plant, where he earned $9 an hour for cataloguing scanned documents, his employers told Palmer that workers in China, India and Mexico could index for 3 cents a letter, compared to the 12 cents it costs in the US. "They got people who don't even speak English," he says. "I blame Bush for sending all the work overseas. Kerry is offering tax breaks to keep business in this country."
Jawad Khan (34), from Pakistan, became a US citizen 16 years ago. While the Palmers enjoyed the food, beer and polka dancing at Hamtramck's Labour Day street festival, Khan rested inside his clapboard house with his wife, Adila, and small son. He has two jobs, making transmission and oil pans for Chrysler for $12 an hour, 45 hours a week, and another 25 hours a week as a cashier at Kmart. His total income in 2003 was $32,000. "I want to go to college, but it's hard," Khan sighs. Despite the exhaustion of a 70-hour work week, he dreads losing income when the Kmart closes.
Like Stanley Palmer, Khan will vote for John Kerry. "Since Bush came, there are no jobs," he says. "When Clinton was in the White House the Sunday papers were full of job offers. All the money is going to Iraq now. Milk has gone from $2.00 a gallon to $3.49. Gas was 99 cents when I came here; now it's $2.00. Bush is only for rich people, not poor people like us."
Tomorrow: a mosque in Hamtramck, Michigan, wins the right to broadcast its prayer call, despite local objections.
