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Katherine Williams stood on her front lawn, bemused, as Secret Service agents and SUVs with flashing lights flooded her suburban street. Barack Obama had arrived to have lunch with a Typical Working Family.

"It's very exciting," the 69-year-old retired housewife acknowledged as the candidate dined a few doors down. But then these are exciting times, for anyone interested in politics in Indiana.

"Everyone's talking about it," Ms. Williams reported.

For Ms. Williams is, right now, the most coveted voter in America. She is a white, middle-class woman of a certain age living in Indiana, and she is about to wield great influence in determining the Democratic nominee for president, when Indiana holds its primary on Tuesday.

"Indiana is going to play a huge role," in deciding whether he or Hillary Clinton will be the nominee, Mr. Obama acknowledged yesterday at one event. A win in Indiana would virtually assure his nomination. A loss would further strengthen Ms. Clinton's resurgence.

Mr. Obama has not been selling well lately among white, blue-collar voters. Women in particular tend to favour Ms. Clinton. Last week, 68 per cent of them voted for her in the Pennsylvania primary, while only 32 per cent supported Mr. Obama. She outpolled him among white males 57 per cent to 43 per cent.

That is why, for Mr. Obama, yesterday was all about the working man's - and especially woman's - vote.

Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, had lunch with Mike and Cheryl Fischer at their modest home in a modest suburb of Indianapolis. She works as a hospital technician and he's a machinist who is in danger of losing his job because of cutbacks.

"They say it's not personal," Mr. Fischer said. "Yes, it is very personal."

Later, Mr. Obama toured a metal-works factory and held a town hall with its workers. When one of them asked why the United States remained a part of World Trade Organization, he agreed that globalized trade had led to "a race to the bottom when it comes to wages and benefits. ... I want those rules to be looking after workers and not just corporate profits," he declared.

Before that tour, the Obamas met with about 40 carefully selected Typical Working Men and Women in a local park to talk over the challenges facing American families, in which Ms. Obama stressed that, until relatively recently, the Obamas were a working family too.

"We are still so close to the lives most Americans are living," she told them.

Before he ran for office in Illinois, the couple were both lawyers, and Mr. Obama taught constitutional law.

"Work isn't a choice, it never felt like a choice to me," she said. "Being a good mom, being a good wife, keeping your marriage together - these are the stresses people feel."

Whether this will sell is anybody's guess, just as it's anybody's guess whether Mr. Obama can exploit his ties to the state - northwestern Indiana is a bedroom region for Chicago, his home base - to finally take a Midwestern industrial state other than his own Illinois. But he should be worried about what Ms. Williams had to say, as she watched all the commotion on her street.

Ms. Williams is genuinely undecided over which candidate to support and doesn't expect to make up her mind until voting day.

But she is not at all pleased with the controversy surrounding Mr. Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and his inflammatory comments about race and the U.S. government.

"I think maybe he [Mr. Obama] didn't show the best judgment" in associating himself for so many years with a pastor who holds such outlandish views, she said.

Across the street, Tom Carson, 62, disagreed. "I think it will turn out to be an asset for him in the end," he said. Mr. Carson believes Mr. Obama "did a very good job" of repudiating Mr. Wright's remarks at Tuesday's news conference.

And Mr. Carson dismissed suggestions that white voters in suburban neighbourhoods might be reluctant to support a black candidate.

"Race has nothing to do with it," he said. "To be honest, a female would be more of problem for some people."

After his lunch, Mr. Obama strolled down the street, where he thrilled Mary Mascari, a 51-year-old housewife and a huge Obama fan, by chatting with her. When a call came on her cellphone, she handed it to Mr. Obama, who introduced himself to her husband.

Ms. Mascari so hopes that her fellow middle-American voters will overcome their doubts and vote for Mr. Obama.

In her words: "Why give up on the first hope we have seen in such a long time?"

But until now, the white Midwest has said it prefers Ms. Clinton. And that was before Mr. Wright made a mess of things.