KALAMAZOO, Mich. -- When Mayor Bobby J. Hopewell talks about the importance of manufacturing to this friendly Michigan town with a name that lends itself to song, he doesn't reel off the usual list of heavy industries typically associated with the word "factory."

He speaks of Kalsec, the Kalamazoo Spice Extraction Company founded in 1958 that produces and markets natural herbs and spices for food manufacturers. He mentions Fabri-Kal, a 62-year-old packaging company that describes itself as "the seventh-largest plastic thermoformer in North America." Think of products in drug stores encased in heavy plastic. And he doesn't leave out the pharmaceutical industry, long vital to his city's economy.

Yes, we still make a lot of stuff in the United States of America, and one of the good things about this election is that it is likely to be decided in the nation's industrial heartland -- in the towns and cities of Ohio above all, but also in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.