In the Heartland, Trouble for Mr. Trump, and Opportunity for Mrs. Clinton

From the New York Times:

CANTON, Minn. — Canton, population 428, was settled by Nordic immigrant farmers. The area’s prim dairy barns, lush hills and deep valleys are what city people picture when they imagine escaping to a quieter life.

Canton sits near a crossroads of three political battleground states: Iowa, with its first-in-primary-season caucuses; Wisconsin, where progressives are battling an ambitious Republican governor; and iconoclastic Minnesota, whose congressional tastes range from the liberal Al Franken to the evangelical Michele Bachmann.

These states make up a big chunk of the crucial Midwestern electorate. All three went Democratic in the 2012 election, and so far, they’ve been more resistant to Donald Trump than Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, suggesting that his appeal to white, working-class resentment has limits.
Conversely, this region could prove fertile ground for Hillary Clinton, especially if she can provide answers to a three-year decline in commodity prices that — combined with rising health costs — has persuaded some farmers to sell out. She must also convince longtime progressives here that her new, more liberal positions are more than just a response to Bernie Sanders.
Mostly white, this region is home to pockets of minorities, from Native Americans to Amish to Hmong. Its Democrats range from trade unionists to members of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, a populist amalgam of farm workers, former hippies and socialist Scandinavians. Mr. Sanders won Minnesota and Wisconsin in landslides. Mrs. Clinton beat Mr. Sanders in Iowa by less than a percentage point.
 
Republicans here are pro-gun and anti-regulation, yet they favor federal farm subsidies and other agriculture assistance. Minnesota was the only state that Marco Rubio won, with Mr. Trump coming in third. Republicans chose Ted Cruz in Iowa, and Mr. Trump came in second. In Wisconsin, Mr. Trump suffered a 13-point defeat to Mr. Cruz, who had the backing of Gov. Scott Walker. Some of this may explain why Representative Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House and Wisconsin Republicans’ favorite son, took until Thursday to issue an endorsement of Mr. Trump.

Lanhee Chen, domestic policy adviser for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and adviser this season to Mr. Rubio, points out that Mr. Trump’s message may not have resonated as much in this region as in the Rust Belt because more people here hold jobs in academia, technology and agriculture — jobs that are less threatened by foreign competition and immigrant labor than factory work is. Mr. Trump’s stance against Mexican immigrants got little traction among dairy farmers, some of whom rely on immigrant labor.
In any case, Mr. Trump should not be putting his hopes in people like Vance and Bonnie Haugen, who milk 180 head on 270 acres near Canton, where they raised three children. Mr. Haugen, a political independent, worked the phones for Bernie Sanders, and both he and his wife voted for Mr. Sanders.
“Taking care of people, making sure that there’s health care for all, and retirement, that message resonates with a lot of folks of Scandinavian background,” Mr. Haugen said. “Do I think he has a viable program? Hell no. But his heart is in the right place.” The Haugens will vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election, which is good news for her. But there’s one member of the family she might worry about, and that is the Haugens’ son Olaf, 31, who told me he’s inclined not to vote.

Interviews with voters throughout this region turned up many who seem anesthetized by years of Washington gridlock and convinced that their lives won’t change no matter who occupies the White House, 1,000 miles east. Olaf, who runs the dairy operation and plants soybeans on additional land nearby, is among the disenchanted. “I don’t know how much that stuff affects my day-to-day,” he said of presidential politics. 

“Anybody who gets in there has got to work with the nutbags in Congress, so there’s not a lot of harm or good that they can do.”

Mr. Trump, he said, is “scary,” a “true loose cannon,” so in the end Olaf may force himself to the polls and vote for Mrs. Clinton. But she clearly has some proving to do — that she’s not “just a standard politician who gives you lip service.”