Guest Blog: Fear and Lies? Hope and Organization? Your Choice!

We're pleased to have another guest blog by Land of Enchantment, who diaries regularly on Daily Kos where this piece first appeared:

We've all heard the whispered smears.

(Psst! Obama's an Arab. He's a secret Muslim. He's a terrorist.)

The stuff of anonymous emails and nutcases in some whipped-up crowd frenzy. Yup, we've all heard about them. But here in New Mexico, it's also getting handed out by Republicans, together with John McCain campaign flyers, right in front of the Republican Party office. Holy Cow!

I knew they didn't have much principle. But there's at least some stuff one would think they'd leave to the anonymous emails, and not attach themselves to it. Wrong again!! But let me, too, give a little context as to what else was going on in the small mountain town of Taos this past weekend.

THE RALLY
Anyhow, I was driving through town this afternoon, on my way to a rally in Kit Carson Park. Rep. Tom Udall appeared, along with Democratic candidate for NM-03, Ben Ray Lujan. It was a fun time, and there was music and plenty of laughter, and hugs. Too bad my favorite picture of Rep. Tom Udall - soon to be Senator-elect Udall - cut the top of his head off. Oh well!!

And here's a group shot of staffers for Ben Ray Luján for Congress and Tom Udall for Senate. Saw a lot of them at the Taos Pueblo GOTV rally last Thursday night (watch for a diary called "Blue Lake Republicans" soon), and will see them again at a rally in the mountain village of Peñasco tomorrow. But they had to rush out this afternoon to get to Albuquerque for Obama's rally there this evening. Then back to the north again tomorrow. Luckily, we've been mostly snow-free so far this season, except for way up around timberline, so the roads haven't been hazardous:

BIG CANVASS DAY
I stopped off at the Combined Campaign Office on my way, and there were as many people out canvassing today as there were at the rally. Which is cool. There's a young lady, high school student, who took a workshop with our very own dK Mindoca, and who's doing a bang up job. She's recruited 35 high school kids to volunteer for the Obama campaign. They're so fresh and enthusiastic, it really lifts the spirit. Here's a few of them about to head out canvassing today:

LOCAL REPUBLICANS TODAY
Our local Republicans are pretty much outnumbered. And they have a bit of an enthusiasm gap. The Democratic combined campaign office is open from 9am to 10pm, 7 days a week. The GOPs? Not so much:

And imagining how nice it will be to crush their spirit, I was thinking how I'd be driving past their GOP HQ on my way from the office to the rally in the park this afternoon. I decided that if they were out waving signs, I'd pull over and give 'em a copy of that GOP Death List thingy - mess with their heads a little. Why not? And so I did. While I was handing it over to a woman with a gigantic cloud of hair accented with sparkles (no kidding!), a younger, blonder creature tossed some literature in my front seat. I took off without looking at it.

When I did? Holy cow! There was one of these - not remarkable. Typical slick campaign tree-waster. Slightly interesting it's in green. Nothing more than that:

THE SMEAR
But then, there was a flyer with THIS cover. Holy cow!! Local party chair wasn't much interested. Local weekly newspaper political reporter not interested either, but then she's accused me of forging "evidence" in the past, so not much to be expected there. But check out what people waving McCain signs, right in front of the Republican Party office in Taos, were handing out at about 3pm this afternoon:

Say what? And the contents were exactly all the crap that's been traveling around via anonymous email. Except this time, the Republicans were owning it! Handing it out to passing cars directly in front of their office. I don't need to include the content, but I've scanned it, and so you can click through to learn how Obama , and he was a , and other such nonsense. Wow!

If it were in a movie, it would almost be funny. But since there's real harm been done, and more to be prevented, it must be taken more seriously than that. So I scanned and it's being submitted up the chain of command in the campaign. And canvassers and phone bankers will be warned that this kind of nonsense is afoot.

WE'RE GONNA WIN
From the rally in the park today.

There wasn't a huge crowd, mebbe a coupla hundred all told - and it was spread out, with many picking spots in the shade around the edge of the park. And music playing pretty much the whole time, too. There was a pretty strong union presence there, too. At least for our small rural town:

And there were lots of family groups. too:

And I had a little chat with the guy who wrote and performed our wonderful local GOTV song: He was in the canvassing crowd at the office. (The embed's in the tip jar...)

Meanwhile, the young lady with the curly hair is the one that's organized the 35 high school kids, many of them too young to vote yet, to volunteer for Obama campaign. The girl's got a future! (That's her proud mom on the right...)

And in the end? These kids are gonna win - the ones full of life and creativity and inclusiveness rather than lies and meanness and fear. And we can all remember what Obama often says: We don't need to go there. We just need to make sure to vote. And to get others out to vote, too.

This is a guest blog by Land of Enchantment. If you'd like to submit a piece for consideration as a guest blog, contact me by clicking on the Email Me button on the upper left-hand corner of the page.