The crowd is lined up at the Dexter Cider Mill for a sip of cider and a bite of sugary donut. A piano player belts out the notes of “The Victors,” the fight song of the University of Michigan. The Huron River flows briskly by, and children are frolicking in the crisp air and midday sun.

The scene is one of families partaking in autumnal bliss. But just beneath the surface lies political unrest. While the Dexter Cider Mill is located less than 11 miles from Ann Arbor, the Berkeley of the heartland, it is located in a solid Republican district. A former member of Michigan’s House of Representatives, a pastor, and an employee of the Moody Bible Institute, Tim Walberg defeated the Republican incumbent from the 7th Congressional District, Joe Schwarz, in August. (Mr. Walberg defines himself as a strong conservative.) He is the candidate of the Club for Growth, a national pro-business and anti-tax group, and is favored to win on Election Day.

The Dexter Cider Mill is a political and ideological crossroad in an important swing state in presidential politics. The issues bubbling up alongside the Huron River may not be in the forefront of the national discussion yet. But come the next presidential election cycle, they may be among the most important. The looming questions for presidential hopefuls in the coming years are economic and domestic. A recent poll conducted by Strategic Vision, a public affairs agency for Republican candidates among other clients based in Georgia, rates President Bush’s performance in regard to the economy as below his performance in any other area.

“The economy here is in the dumper,” says Don Halley, a 61-year-old schoolteacher from Westland, Mich. “A lot of auto plants are moving south to the ‘Right to Work’ states. Part suppliers are going to Mexico.”

There is worry over the hemorrhaging in the auto industry. In September, the Ford Motor Company announced a buy-out plan to trim 30,000 jobs, and some 75,000 employees must decide by the end of November to take an early retirement plan. General Motors also implemented a program of job cuts. Each person weighing the decision to stay or go represents a larger number of voters — a spouse or other family members will vote in solidarity with their loved one. While we don’t know which whey those voters will go, economic concerns are sure to be at the top of their list.

While the United Auto Workers, the union representing these workers, was once strong, economic circumstances have bled the union’s ability to protect its members. Little noticed nationally, but of great importance, was the UAW’s decision in June to transfer $110 million from its strike fund into recruiting. The union is pushing to represent medical workers and those who do other work than fit metal and assemble cars. An example of the UAW’s new direction is an October 3 press release headlined as follows: “UAW will support nurses’ fight for quality patient care, despite new restrictions on workplace rights.”

Discussion over the war in Iraq is more respectful than in Ann Arbor, where signs and bumper stickers read: “Impeach Bush!” A veteran in a hunting jacket doesn’t want to discuss the struggle in Iraq with a stranger, saying only, “Either you want to be here or you don’t.” I take this statement as a strong voice of support for the American men and women fighting in the war without venturing into the underlying issues. A young mother accompanies her toddler to look at the roiling river when the discussion turns to foreign policy. Talk of war is perhaps too close to home — her husband is fighting in the war — on a bucolic fall day. In this part of the country, war talk is not just political strategy, but instead is quite personal. Ron, a 69-year-old bugler, not a veteran, who plays taps for the American Legion, exclaims, “There’s no way we jump out of there fast.” Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic consultant who helped work with the UAW during the 2000 elections, says Democratic candidates ought to be thinking more about the type of voters one meets in a place like the Cider Mill. “Michigan reflects possibly the most important population for any presidential victory,” he says. “The target for everybody whether it is Republican or Democratic is white Catholic men who are disaffected. The disaffection of auto workers is emblematic of every trade that’s been hurt by the reduction of the auto industry.”

While Michigan has swung Democratic during the last two presidential elections, Mr. Sheinkopf’s white Catholic male voters are a key demographic in important deciding areas, such as Ohio, Missouri, and western Pennsylvania. These are the successors to the old Reagan Democrats, union members, lunch-pail Democrats who abandoned Jimmy Carter in an era of recession, international weakness, and foreign policy confusion.

Mr. Sheinkopf contends that the historic Democratic electoral advantage on economic issues could help the party retake the White House in 2008. He estimated at least $1 million will be “spent in the heartland to influence 500,000 voters.”

One reason Senator Kerry failed to win Ohio in 2004 was his inability to connect with such voters, largely on cultural grounds. Mr. Kerry’s aristocratic bearing was a natural obstacle in winning over these men in 2004. Senator Clinton’s success upstate could prefigure her appeal to these important voters.

There is a wild card here as well. Mitt Romney, the governor of Massachusetts, grew up in Michigan and is the son of a former governor and auto executive, George Romney. The bulk of Mr. Romney’s experience prior to serving as governor was as a venture capitalist with Bain Capital, where he gained a reputation as a turnaround artist. His name for president is on the lips of Democrats and Republicans at the Cider Mill. “He’s impressed me,” says Mr. Halley, who supported George Romney in the 1960s. The Strategic Vision poll puts Senator McCain (39%), Mayor Giuliani (25%), and Governor Romney (15%) atop the Republican field and Mrs. Clinton (30%) and Vice President Gore (22%) atop the Democratic one.

Whatever the polls say now, an opening exists for the candidate who can address the economic disquiet in the industrial Midwest. That is the message of the Dexter Cider Mill.

Mr. Gitell (www.gitell.com) is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.