familiar refrain, "Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organisation bombed the US Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington." Another has Rudy Giuliani saying that Obama is soft on crime. As part of a Republican campaign strategy that now seems to be based almost exclusively on arousing voters' fears, these calls make sense. But if the experts are right, they can't compete with boots on the ground. About this article James Ridgeway on how Obama's army of volunteers could prove key in this election This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 05.27 EDT on Wednesday 29 October 2008 . It was last modified at 09.57 EDT on Wednesday 29 October 2008 . It was first published at 05.38 EDT on Wednesday 29 October 2008 . Comments Oooh, that's got to be a kick in the plums for the McCain campaign. Yeah, turns out that an advantage to being "just a community organiser" is that you're really good at, you know, organising communities. This is such an exciting time. Obama has really managed to move people and generate such belief. I hope that he will be as good as he promises, I think he will. If only we had someone in this country who could cause such a stir. Tony Blair is not analagous - we need someone who knows something about real life, who can connect with us and