Betting the Farm

All week, Joe Schroeder has been listening to shutdown stories pouring into Farm Aid’s hotline. There was the cotton farmer who could not get disaster assistance to help him recover from Hurricane Michael. The woman in her 90s facing foreclosure on her family farm. The dairy farmer trying to make one last attempt to renegotiate her loan with the Farm Service Agency.

“You cannot reach anybody,” Mr. Schroeder said.

Mr. Trump is expected to address a largely friendly audience on Monday at the American Farm Bureau’s annual convention. Many farmers, including David Nunnery, 59, of Pike County, Miss., have stayed unflinchingly loyal to Mr. Trump and his demands for $5.7 billion for a border wall, even as the shutdown threatens their livelihood.

“I may lose the farm, but I strongly feel we need some border security,” Mr. Nunnery said.

One really obvious problem theory that Trump’s critical marginal support among whites without college degrees was about his fake economic populism rather than his real racism is that he’s delivered the racism along with orthodox pro-plutocratic Republican economic policies, and these voters still love him.