I have a place in rural America --beautiful north woods where the locals are hard working, older, white and not terribly prosperous. The caretaker on my property, let's call him "Frank", fits the bill. He's 70, a Democrat, winters near Tampa in a trailer, and works at least part of all days on various jobs for area homeowners. Down in Florida he keeps busy as a clerk in a Home Depot.

Frank and I were checking a roof on the property and Frank had plenty to say as usual in a cheerful banter. First of all, no way is he voting for Obama. Why not? He was a big Kerry supporter and a local Democratic committeeman. "Not my kind and I'm not racist, but don't trust him." He went on to tell me how the locals coming into the Home Depot called Obama a "c---" (a highly inflammatory word for black) and one guy even said "the Klan would take care of him." Frank said "He hadn't heard talk like that in years." He didn't subscribe to that sort of extreme thinking, "but I served in the army with (blacks) and they're all the same."

Then Frank segued into gas prices. He's limiting trips into town, a 20-mile round trip circuit in his red pickup. He carefully plans out what he needs to get, and if he forgets something too bad. He won't make a special run. Food is getting expensive too, he says. So he and his wife aren't eating out or going to the movies like they might have last year. He's fed up with the war and has no use for the Republicans.

I said, "Frank, maybe you'll end up voting for Obama." He laughed and said, "No way."

So I had a couple of takeaways from my conversation with Frank. All this palaver about Obama's trouble with blue collar, rural whites is really code for tip-toeing around hardscrabble racist attitudes, still embedded in many parts of American society. Many whites like Frank just will not vote for an Afro American. This election will bring that reality into sharp relief by November. It won't be pretty.

And all this talk about mild recession or even no recession in comfortable Wall Street conclaves doesn't register out in the hustings or at JC Penney and Macys for that matter. The average American is cutting back out of necessity. We're buying less of everything and turning more frugal. The credit crunch was last year's news. A consumer nosedive will be this year's, and don't confuse the two.

When I got back to the city, my white shoe lawyer neighbor with the SUV said he discovered something about gas tanks at the fill-up station this past weekend. He told me the pricing dials don't have enough slots to register charges above $100. We've broken through another barrier. No wonder Frank is taking fewer trips into town.

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Jonathan D. Miller

A marketing communication strategist who turned to real estate analysis, Jonathan D. Miller is a foremost interpreter of 21st citistate futures – cities and suburbs alike – seen through the lens of lifestyles and market realities. For more than 20 years (1992-2013), Miller authored Emerging Trends in Real Estate, the leading commercial real estate industry outlook report, published annually by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute (ULI). He has lectures frequently on trends in real estate, including the future of America's major 24-hour urban centers and sprawling suburbs. He also has been author of ULI’s annual forecasts on infrastructure and its What’s Next? series of forecasts. On a weekly basis, he writes the Trendczar blog for GlobeStreet.com, the real estate news website. Outside his published forecasting work, Miller is a prominent communications/institutional investor-marketing strategist and partner in Miller Ryan LLC, helping corporate clients develop and execute branding and communications programs. He led the re-branding of GMAC Commercial Mortgage to Capmark Financial Group Inc. and he was part of the management team that helped build Equitable Real Estate Investment Management, Inc. (subsequently Lend Lease Real Estate Investments, Inc.) into the leading real estate advisor to pension funds and other real institutional investors. He joined the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the U.S. in 1981, moving to Equitable Real Estate in 1984 as head of Corporate/Marketing Communications. In the 1980's he managed relations for several of the country's most prominent real estate developments including New York's Trump Tower and the Equitable Center. Earlier in his career, Miller was a reporter for Gannett Newspapers. He is a member of the Citistates Group and a board member of NYC Outward Bound Schools and the Center for Employment Opportunities.