UPDATE 1-U.S. candidates respond to voters economic fears

(Adds comments from South Bend diner, McCain housing plan)

By Caren Bohan

SOUTH BEND, Ind., April 10 (Reuters) - Facing job losses, rising mortgage rates and higher gasoline prices, U.S. voters in 2008 want their next president above all to listen to their anger and fix the economy.

As the U.S. economy sinks into a possible recession, all three top White House contenders, Republican John McCain and Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, say they speak for middle class voters whose real income has stagnated for years and has begun to decline while the very rich get richer.

In a recent CBS/New York Times poll, 81 percent of voters said the country was on the wrong track, an unprecedented figure. Seventy-eight percent said things were worse than five years ago.

The candidates are echoing the views of voters like, Marvin Kline, 61, who feels a privileged few are benefiting while the middle class struggles.

Talking to Obama over orange juice at the Sunrise Cafe in South Bend, Indiana, Kline told being laid off from his job of nearly 40 years at a foundry. Two years ago, the plant closed and moved overseas and Kline now lives off his pension.

"These plants that have gone and this happens every day and all of it is corporate greed -- to see how much money you can make off the backs of the American people," he said.

A sense of unfairness is not limited to those who have lost their jobs. Mary Magargee, a 63-year-old teacher who attended an Obama rally in Malvern, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, said she finds it shocking to learn of large pay packages for oil executives as Americans pay record-high prices for fuel.