Firing his rhetoric with religious fervour, Vice-President Al Gore swept through three fiercely contested states on Saturday, practically ordering his most reliable supporters to "take your souls to the polls" on election day.
From a Memphis, Tennessee, prayer breakfast just after dawn with 1,200 religious leaders, most of them black, to the hills and hollows of West Virginia's coal country and then a rally among union workers in this city where hard hats and steel once reigned, the Vice-President delivered a blunt message:
"Some people are tired of prosperity. They look back to a period eight years ago and they say we were better off then than we are now. I don't agree. They recommend we go back to the kinds of policies we had then and get rid of the ones we have now. I don't agree."
In Huntington, West Virginia, the Democratic nominee told several thousand people at an airport rally:
"We have created good jobs in America, but still there are people who do not have them. We have increased family wealth in America, but there are too many families that are still suffering."
There is, Mr Gore said on Saturday, "a preference on the other side for a dog-eat-dog, every-person-for-himself mentality. That works fine for the very wealthy but does not work very well for those who are struggling to get by," he said.
Mr Gore's pace - hitting three states, in addition to a detour to his son's football game in suburban Washington - was not unusual three days before a presidential election. But the itinerary - in his home state of Tennessee and in historically Democratic West Virginia, if not the traditional battleground of Pennsylvania - testified to the neck-and-neck competition with Mr Bush.
Mr Gore spent the day emphasising the need for Democratic turnout, employing one of his favourite campaign-closing riffs from the successful 1992 presidential race. He offered his West Virginia audience two possible outcomes for next week.
"You wake up early on Wednesday morning with a headache and look out the window and there's a cold, driving rain with sleet and hail mixed into it rapping on your window," he said.
"The clouds have blackened out the dawn and you get out of bed slowly and painfully and walk toward the door. . . The newspaper is soaked through and through and stuck to the front stoop. And you peel it off and hold it up to the light in the gloomy darkness, and through that light you barely make out a headline that says `Bush Wins'." His audience booed lustily.
Or, he continued, there is another alternative. "Now imagine that on Wednesday morning just before you awaken a golden shaft of sunlight is on your eyelids and you awaken refreshed and feeling wonderful. The fresh aroma of fresh brewed coffee wafts in from the kitchen. . . You leap out of bed and dance your way to the front door. You hear birds chirping on the front porch. The sunlight now is making your face feel warm.
"You reach down and pick up the newspaper," he said, his voice rising to full shout and his audience cheering back, "and it says `Gore-Lieberman win. West Virginia Wins."'
"Let's do it!" he cried.
During his remarks to the ministers - all with the goal of ensuring that supporters will be voters on Tuesday - he also sprinkled his words with biblical references.
He evoked the memory of the Rev Martin Luther King with the help of the slain civil rights leader's son and namesake, who made a last-minute journey to Memphis to introduce Mr Gore.
Mr Gore's attention to black voters was not accidental as they are the Democratic Party's most loyal voting base. Labour union members and black voters are critical to Mr Gore's chances of success in pivotal states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Before religious leaders, who for 25 years have been at the heart of his political support in his native Tennessee, the former Vanderbilt graduate theology student implored them to look beyond the superficial.
"You know me. You know my heart. You know that it doesn't matter whether my coat is on or off, what colour suit I wear, what kind of tie I put on. You don't care, actually, [about] the facial expressions I have or whether I sigh into the microphone."
"It's time to take your souls to the polls. It's time to choose the future. It's time to be the change we want to see in Memphis and in Tennessee and in the United States of America."
Online - The Irish Times www.ireland.com
The Irish Times website, www.ireland.com, will carry live coverage of the US presidential and congressional elections over the coming days. The US Election 2000 site will have the latest from the campaign trail up until voting begins tomorrow. It will also have detailed results as they become available throughout tomorrow night and Wednesday morning. Its extensive coverage early on Wednesday morning will include exit polls from the key states followed by live results from each state. The site will also carry video streams of the victory and concession speeches as well as up-to-the minute news reports and analysis from Irish Times reporters based in the United States. Readers will also be able to air their views on the outcome of the election, read profiles of the candidates and look back at President Bill Clinton's years in the White House.