WS: Nice sounding piece, but it looks good only on paper on a computer screen. It is based on an essentially flawed assumption that the so-called white trash is where it is because it has been "left behind" liberal intellectuals and left prey to corporate and right wing manipulations.
I do not think it is the case. A mindset (redneck or otherwise) is a product of social relations. People are not born as clean slates, they have affective dispositions that make them more likely to accept "left" or "right" ideologies of the land. Of course it does not predetermine that acceptance, but it increases or decreases probabilities. A person who naturally feels uncomfortable about variety, diversity, uncertainty, or ambivalence will more likely accept a right-wing, militaristic or strict-religious ideologies that offer him (or her) an illusion of certitude.
What is more, mindsets are products of social conditions from the day individuals are born. Mindset shaped by living conditions of a trailer park or a ghetto are very much different from mindsets shaped by affluent communities and private schools. So when a person grows up to a point that he/she is in a position to leave the trailer park -I ti s already too late. He/she may leave the trailer park, if he/she is lucky, but the trailer park will not leave him/her, at least not easily. It is like learning a language - you need to master it before you are 12 to be a native speaker. After that it will always be your second language, spoken with an "accent", no matter how well you know its vocabulary and grammar.
Therefore, the "trailer trash" is where it is not because it was "left behind" but because it was simply born and shaped there, and there was no compelling force to move them somewhere else. A big part of it is the lack of opportunities that would allow them to be something else - to be sure. But those opportunities might have made a difference only if those folks were born to different parents and lived in a different world, that is, if they were different people. When they reach adulthood, they are pretty much set in their ways - and these ways are unlikely to change by liberal agitation err. "organizing." Just like it is unreasonable to expect that people who grew up in, say, China or Eastern Europe, will think, feel, and speak like Americans. They may learn English, but only as a second language.
So the only way to "organize" these folks is to appeal to their ways - which is precisely what bible thumpers and conservatives are doing. A liberal/left message will have to be crafted to appeal to these expectations and values, or otherwise it will fall on deaf ears. But that will turn the liberal/left message into republicanism light a la Clinton, Lieberman & Co.
In sum, the people of whom Joe Bageant is so eloquently speaking (and if I memory serves, he even wrote a book about them) were not "left behind" by "liberal elites." Not at all. They dumped "liberal elites" for something they found more appealing - ass kicking a la Limbaugh or O'Reilly (talk show liberal whacking) or a la Bush (political and military foreigner whacking). If the "liberal elites" want to win the favor of the "trailer trash" back, they need to come with their own version of ass kicking and scapegoat whacking - but I do not think many of them would want to go there. What would be the point?
Wojtek