HERE, in one of the most decisive battlegrounds of the 2008 election, voters have a very simple message for Washington politicians.
Shut the hell up.
And quit calling!
“Whatever this guy says versus what that guy says means nothing to me,” said a mother of three young children, sitting in the shade of her open garage in Sterling Heights, Mich., hoping to sell her old shoes, dresses, a used blender and the attachments for the above-ground pools she can no longer afford to fill.
Out front, a “for sale” sign has advertised her small, white-brick ranch for eight weeks. She’s had no offers and teeters on the edge of skipping her mortgage payments in favor of groceries.
From her driveway, she points to a half-dozen homes that are either up for sale or in foreclosure.
“People are losing their homes,” she said. “Who has time to get into all the politics?”
After nearly a decade of continuous job losses, a shrinking economy and a sliding housing market, Michigan sees the current upheaval on Wall Street as nothing new.
Polls show Barack Obama and John McCain nearly even, a troubling sign for Obama, especially in white suburbs of Detroit, where racial distrust runs high.
Post interviews with more than a dozen voters here found that people have pretty much given up on Washington and politics.
“I am so sick of these politicians,” said Betty Vibbard, helping a neighbor – in similarly dire straits – with a yard sale of his own. “They call the house all the time and I just hang up on them.”
In these working class neighborhoods of square blocks, tidy homes and painted statues of the Holy Mother, home realty signs and yard sales drastically outnumber displays of political affection.
A brief journey through one such tract of homes found 13 Marys, 28 “for sale” signs, seven yard sales and just one political yard sign.
It was for Obama, but no one was home.
Sterling Heights is part of Macomb County, famous in politics as the birthplace of “Reagan Democrats” – white union Democrats who voted for President Reagan in 1980.
A poll last month showed McCain trouncing Obama in the heavily Democratic county, 51-42.
Macomb County Democrats are precisely the type of Democrats who gave Hillary Clinton stunning primary victories in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Racial suspicions in these white neighborhoods ringing Detroit are clearly part of the equation.
“They’re not really naturally Obama voters,” observed Bill Ballenger, one of Michigan’s most astute political observers. “There are a lot of people out there who aren’t bigots or racists, but are tired of getting beat up.”
Further complicating matters for the Obama campaign is that polls can hardly be trusted when race is a factor.
Two years ago, Michigan voters rebuffed a massive political campaign and overwhelmingly approved Proposal 2 to ban affirmative action at state schools.
Polling suggested a very close race, not the 16-point shellacking it turned out to be.
“Going into that election, the polls were really muddled,” Ballenger said. “Somebody was lying out there.” churt@nypost.com