Politics at the Five-and-Dime

So am I, the manager said.

Her drive between work and home takes her past the campaign signs again.

In the ranch house with the "Veterans for McCain" sign is Donnalee Eirschele, age 57, a former public school custodian on disability: "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 the modern split-level house with the Obama sign: Derek Forney, age 40, an account manager for a benefits company. "What Bush and his party have failed to deliver on is inclusiveness," says Forney, an evangelical Christian who voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004. "I'm very interested in bringing people together. I have a young daughter. I don't want her to grow up in a divided country."

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On her day off, Fleck visits her month-old granddaughter. "Hello!" she says, dropping her purse as she walks through the door of her daughter's house and rushes 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 the missing bottle of green tea. 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."

The big dilemma is that Nicole's company just told her that she can't come back part-time after the baby -- it has to be full-time. "The way Michigan is now, my boss is leaning on me," Nicole says. 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 tells her mother that Aunt Sherry has been working on her, too. "Aunt Sherry said, 'You gotta drop with the Democrat and Republican stuff.' And I said, 'You are gonna have to drop the race and Muslim thing.' "

"She is very passionate," Fleck says of her sister. "She has strong feelings. You hear so many things, it's hard to believe what's true."

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 yard. A deer statue stands in the grass. A grill. A garage full of tools. Fleck tells her kids that Dollar General wants her to move to another store. Nicole wishes her mother could stay home and watch the baby, but Fleck explains that she can't go without health insurance.

"I hate her job," she says. "They take advantage of her."

Fleck's voice is soft. "I put my heart and soul into it."

She drives home, past campaign signs and foreclosure signs. "One way or another, something is going to work out for us," she says.

Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.