Candidates respond to voters economic fears

By Caren Bohan

SOUTH BEND, Indiana (Reuters) - Facing job losses, rising mortgage rates and higher gasoline prices, U.S. voters in 2008 want their next president above all to listen to their anger and fix the economy.

As the U.S. economy sinks into a possible recession, all three top White House contenders, Republican John McCain and Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, say they speak for middle class voters whose real income has stagnated for years and has begun to decline while the very rich get richer.

In a recent CBS/New York Times poll, 81 percent of voters said the country was on the wrong track, an unprecedented figure. Seventy-eight percent said things were worse than five years ago.

The candidates are echoing the views of voters like, Marvin Kline, 61, who feels a privileged few are benefiting while the middle class struggles.

Talking to Obama over orange juice at the Sunrise Cafe in South Bend, Indiana, Kline told of being laid off from his job of nearly 40 years at a foundry. Two years ago, the plant closed and moved overseas and Kline now lives off his pension.

"These plants have gone and this happens every day, and all of it is corporate greed -- to see how much money you can make off the backs of the American people," he said. "When is this going to stop?"

A sense that there is unfairness is not limited to those who have lost jobs. Mary Magargee, a 63-year-old teacher who attended an Obama rally in Malvern, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, said she found it shocking to learn of large pay packages for oil executives as Americans pay record-high prices for fuel.

"It's unconscionable that they're making all that money and people are paying almost $4 a gallon for gasoline," she said.

Historically, when economic times are hard, the party holding the White House has an uphill fight to retain control.

McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, must find a way to respond to voter anger without totally divorcing himself from Republicans who still support President George W. Bush.

Clinton and Obama have no such problem.

"Under George Bush, we've seen tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans who don't need them and didn't ask for them," Obama, an Illinois senator, said in Gary, Indiana. "We've been extending a hand to Wall Street, but not lifting a finger for Main Street."

Obama, who would be the first black president, and Clinton, who would be the first woman to win the White House, are vying to be their party's nominee to run against McCain in November.

Clinton was the first of the three to strike a populist note, pledging to fight for the interests of truckers, auto workers and waitresses.

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