By MARY DEJEVSKY
NASHVILLE - The music pulsates, the crowd wave placards, cheer and stomp. Vice-President Al Gore and his entourage stride on to the stage at the Wildhorse Saloon, voted America's "top nightspot" last year, to rally their troops for the last big push of a long campaign.
It is a raucous but somehow strangely perfunctory fundraiser and the audience, who have paid upwards of $US100 ($250) each, have just heard Billy Ray Cyrus solemnly serenading the guest of honour: "When your friends turn away, when you've given yourself and it seems like you can't make it through - you just stand ... "
Gore hardly lightens the mood. "You wake up on November 8," he says in words essayed at his pep talk to campaign staff and volunteers a couple of hours before, "and you feel terrible. It's cold and grey outside, it's drizzling, rain mixed with sleet. You get out of bed and stub your toe. Ouch.
"You stumble to the door and pick up your newspaper. It's all wet, but you can just make out the front page. It says: 'Bush-Cheney win'."
Gore is trying to shock the last wavering voters into his Democratic camp as he powers into the last two weeks of a contest that is the culmination of his lifetime in politics.
"It's up to you," he yells out to the ranks of cheering supporters. "You have a choice!"
And then he invokes the bright, sunny morning, with the birds chirping and the wafting aroma of fresh coffee that would herald the alternative "Gore-Lieberman win."
"The momentum," Gore says, citing the latest polls, "is with us."
But in revealing his ultimate nightmare in these last critical days, he is also breaking the cardinal rule of campaigning: never, ever conceive of defeat.
Gore and his entourage - his wife, mother, brother-in-law and campaign manager along with his running mate and wife - spent the best part of 24 hours in his home state of Tennessee, which is pretty much the last place any of them expected to be campaigning in at this stage in the contest.
Tennessee should be secure for Gore.
Yet no one in his camp tries to conceal any more that he is in big danger of losing the state.
If he fails to carry Tennessee, he will be the first presidential candidate since George McGovern 28 years ago to lose his home state.
In an election that is the closest for 40 years, such a loss would not only be embarrassing, it could lose Gore the election.
While support for Gore's opponent, George W. Bush, seems energised and focused, Gore's seems just slightly downbeat.
One of those who helped organise the Wildhorse Saloon party said that it had not been easy and that there had certainly been space for more people.
Some of those attending also muttered about the lateness and sparseness of the live entertainment.
In contrast, Bush dropped in on eastern Tennessee the same morning and drew more than 1000 to a "town-hall' meeting announced only 24 hours before.
There were so many people that proceedings had to be broadcast outside.
Bush, though, has his own surprises to deal with.
He was en route to the state that could be his nemesis - Florida - where his brother is governor and which could prove to be his "Tennessee."
Meanwhile, in the real Tennessee, there was ample proof of the Bush camp's confidence.
On election night, America's "top nightspot" - with life-size horses strung upside-down from the rafters - has been hired for the Republicans' party.
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Fear of losing haunts US Democrat campaign
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