Sen. John McCain may have offered a sneak preview of his debate game plan this morning during an interview with an Orlando TV station.

McCain appeared on WFTV and jumped on the ACORN bandwagon. He questioned Sen. Barack Obama’s ties to the group of community organizers and suggested voter fraud could determine the outcome of the vote in Florida. Take a look:

While some of his campaign advisers have been making an issue of ACORN’s alleged voter-fraud efforts — campaign manager Rick Davis referred to the organization as “fraudulent” and “law-breaking” during a conference call with reporters last week — this appears to be the first time that McCain personally chimed in on the matter.

In the interview, McCain tacked on a reference to Bill Ayers for good measure, after several days of both he and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, not mentioning the former radical. The Ayers line of attack drew a flurry of bad press after some supporters at GOP allies were heard yelling out “terrorist,” or “kill him” in reference to Obama.

Yesterday, McCain suggested he would bring up Ayers during tonight’s presidential debate, and it now appears that ACORN could be in the mix as well.

But stock markets took another pounding today, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping more than 700 points. If McCain plays the Ayers and ACORN cards tonight, he runs the risk of appearing to create distractions to avoid discussion of the faltering economy, an important issue on voters’ minds.

If the public construes McCain’s attacks negatively, he might not have another chance to shift the race’s momentum in his favor.

On Wednesday, at 1:35pm, DeLong noted the contrast between Sen. John McCain shrinking from mentioning Ayers in the debate — even as his campaign “spent several days making an issue of Obama’s ties to the former Weatherman.” So DeLong issued a basic challenge: “If McCain believes Ayers is a worthy campaign issue, he should probably be willing to raise it to Obama’s face.”

By Wednesday night, of course, Sen. Barack Obama shared the same thought. “We’ve been seeing some pretty over-the-top attacks coming out of the McCain campaign over the last several days,” Obama told ABC, stressing that during the debate, McCain “wasn’t willing to say it to my face.”

By Thursday afternoon, this face-off dare was the Obama campaign’s message priority.

“[McCain] could not bring himself to look Barack Obama in the eye and say the same things to him,” said Sen. Joe Biden. “In my neighborhood, when you’ve got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him,” he added. Last night, an article about that attack topped all the political stories online, according to Memorandum.

This pushback is adept because it avoids any defensiveness. Instead, it is emphasizing that there is something wrong with McCain’s behavior. By leaning into the potential debate attack, the Obama camp is trying to steal any thunder from a last-ditch offensive. If McCain doesn’t raise it next week, Democrats can argue that he copped out — that even McCain doesn’t think Ayers is a big deal.

If McCain does play the Ayers card at the final debate, the Obama camp can argue that McCain only acted under pressure — erratically switching his strategy under pressure from Obama.

But, unfortunately, the McCain campaign still thinks Ayers is the single most important campaign issue — even though its own spokespeople agree the American people don’t care. This morning, it released a nearly two-minute video linking Sen. Barack Obama to the former Weatherman.

In his column today in The Washington Post, George Will lys bare the absurdity and desperation of Sen. John McCain’s cynical, last-ditch ploy:

Before Tuesday night’s uneventful event, gall was fueling what might be the McCain-Palin campaign’s closing argument. It is less that Obama has bad ideas than that Obama is a bad person.

This, McCain and his female Sancho Panza say, is demonstrated by bad associations Obama had in Chicago, such as with William Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist. But the McCain-Palin charges have come just as the Obama campaign is benefiting from a mass mailing it is not paying for. Many millions of American households are gingerly opening envelopes containing reports of the third-quarter losses in their 401(k) and other retirement accounts — telling each household its portion of the nearly $2 trillion that Americans’ accounts have recently shed. In this context, the McCain-Palin campaign’s attempt to get Americans to focus on Obama’s Chicago associations seems surreal — or, as a British politician once said about criticism he was receiving, “like being savaged by a dead sheep.”

Ouch.

If you need more evidence for the shambles in which the McCain campaign finds itself, during an appearance on “The Colbert Report” last night, former Republican congressman and current MSNBC host Joe Scarborough declared “it’s too late” for McCain.

And in his latest campaign scorecard, Time’s Mark Halperin writes that “without a major change in the race’s dynamics, McCain has no clear path” to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

It’s telling that McCain and Obama have slated rallies early next week in the historically red state of Virginia, where Obama has opened up a sizeable lead in recent polls. Politico reports that both candidates have invited special guests.

Hank “Are you ready for some football?” Williams Jr., is scheduled to open a McCain-Palin rally in Virginia Beach Monday.

Obama is expected to bring out the big guns Sunday at rallies in Richmond and Roanoke, with appearances by former President Bill Clinton, who will presumably remind voters of a time when the budget yielded surpluses and the economy was not in turmoil.

The next day, the McCain campaign will likely still be talking about Ayers.

The first release features a statement from John M. Murtagh, who said his family’s Manhattan home was fire-bombed by the Weathermen when he was 9 years old.

“When I was 9 years old, the Weather Underground, the terrorist group founded by Barack Obama’s friend William Ayers, firebombed my house. Barack Obama has dismissed concerns about his relationship with Ayers by noting that he was only a child when Ayers was planting bombs at the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol. But Ayers has never apologized for his crimes, he has reveled in them, expressing regret only for the fact that he didn’t do more.

“While Barack Obama once downplayed his relationship with Ayers, today his campaign took that deceit one step further. Barack Obama now denies he was even aware of his friend’s violent past when, in 1995, Ayers hosted a party launching Obama’s political career. Given Ayers’ celebrity status among the left, it’s difficult to believe. The question remains: what did Obama know, and when did he know it? When did Obama learn the truth about his friend? Barack Obama helped Ayers promote his book in 1997, served on charitable boards with him through 2002, and regularly exchanged emails and phone calls with him through 2005. At what point did Barack Obama discover that his friend was an unrepentant terrorist? And if he is so repulsed by the acts of terror committed by William Ayers, why did the relationship continue? Any honest accounting by Barack Obama will necessarily cast further doubt on his judgment and his fitness to serve as commander in chief.

“Barack Obama may have been a child when William Ayers was plotting attacks against U.S. targets — but I was one of those targets. Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family.”

The statement was accompanied by a link to Murtagh’s emotional account of the fire-bombing.

In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called “Panther 21,” members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of February 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. (Today, of course, we’d call that a car bomb.) A neighbor heard the first two blasts and, with the remains of a snowman I had built a few days earlier, managed to douse the flames beneath the car. That was an act whose courage I fully appreciated only as an adult, an act that doubtless saved multiple lives that night…

Though no one was ever caught or tried for the attempt on my family’s life, there was never any doubt who was behind it. Only a few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. The same cell had bombed my house, writes Ron Jacobs in The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. And in late November that year, a letter to the Associated Press signed by Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife, promised more bombings.

The second release included a list of 100 former U.S. ambassadors who have endorsed the GOP presidential nominee. Time’s Michael Scherer noticed an interesting connection to the Obama-Ayers controversy:

This morning John McCain put out a list of 100 former ambassadors who are supporting his campaign. Number two is Lenore Annenberg, the wife of Ambassador William Annenberg, the founder of the Annenberg Institute of Reform, which funded the Annenberg Challenge, which once had two famous board members: former “domestic terrorist” William Ayers and Sen. Barack Obama.

So either we should all be outraged that John McCain is supported by a family who funded a foundation that hired a domestic terrorist, or this whole William Ayers thing is just plain silly. I choose the latter.

McCain’s refusal to mention Ayers during last night’s debate indicates a hesitance to “go there” in Obama’s presence, after his campaign spent several days making an issue of Obama’s ties to the former Weatherman. If McCain believes Ayers is a worthy campaign issue, he should probably be willing to raise it to Obama’s face.

Local interviews are usually less risky than network appearances. If one doesn’t go well, the fallout is largely restricted to the viewing area — though YouTube is obviously changing this.

Also, questions tend to be softer and more locally focused, such as: “Why is Florida important in this election?”

Of course, as Sen. John McCain can tell you, this isn’t always the case.

The other obvious benefit is that lower-profile interviews give Palin some much-needed practice, so she can avoid the deer-in-headlights moments that drew so much attention during her interviews with Katie Couric.

Last night, as the political world’s attention was on second presidential debate in Nashville, Palin held her first real news conference with reporters aboard her campaign plane. During the 15-minute exchange, Palin attempted to rename the “Troopergate” investigation as “Tasergate” — a reference to the “Tasering” of her nephew by the state trooper at the center of the controversy, Palin’s former brother-in-law.

She also took a question about her criticism of Sen. Barack Obama for his ties to former Weatherman William Ayers. From CBS’ Scott Conroy:

Asked why she has been focusing her remarks over the last few days on the questionable connection between Barack Obama and 1960s radical William Ayers, rather than on the tanking economy, Palin defended her tactic.

“Well, Americans are caring about the problems in the economy, of course, and wanting to know what those long-term solutions are that our ticket can provide and what the other ticket is proposing,” Palin said. “So when you talk though about what it is that we are proposing and what it is that Barack Obama is proposing, again it is relevant to connect that association that he has with Ayers, not so much he as a person—Ayers—but the whole situation and the truthfulness and the judgment there that you must question if again he’s not being forthright in all of his answers as to how did you know him, when did you know him, why would you continue to be associated with him?”

When asked directly by a reporter, Palin denied that she was suggesting Obama was dishonest. But she did seem to question the Democrat’s integrity during another portion of the news conference.

“It makes you wonder about the forthrightedness (sic), the truthfulness of the plans that he is telling America in regards to the economic recovery because that is first and foremost on American’s minds,” Palin said.

Whether the McCain campaign will risk putting her back in front of the national “mainstream media” remains to be seen. The recent interviews may reflect a new media strategy — limit her availability to just the local press in highly contested regions, where there is the least risk and the most potential benefit.

McCain was cool and soft-spoken, the grumpiness that reportedly has his campaign staff fretting was left behind. After refusing to even look at Obama during the first debate, and then denying it, McCain went out of his way to look at opponent throughout the debate. The town hall format — his favorite — allowed McCain to interact with the audience, and he didn’t hesitate to walk right up into the audience and speak directly to the questioners.

A few notes:

Despite the fact that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s attacks on Obama for his connection to William Ayers have been grabbing headlines for the last few days, McCain made no mention of Ayers. In fact, throughout the last few days, McCain has yet to mention Ayers, preferring to leave those attacks to Palin and his surrogates.

Although McCain spoke extensively about his work to reduce earmarks, he never repeated his frequent claim that he has never once requested a single earmark or pork-barrel project for his home state. I haven’t heard him say it in a while, so perhaps he’s abandoned this claim. That would be good, considering it’s not true.

Responding to a question about how he would “fix” Social Security and Medicare, McCain devoted his entire answer to Social Security, saying future recipients would probably not receive benefits at same level as current retirees. He also said he would get to discussing Medicare, but never did. This is very convenient, considering one of his own advisers reportedly said McCain’s health plan would require deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid in order to be “budget neutral.”

McCain again repeated the claim that Obama has voted 94 times for higher taxes, which FactCheck.org called “inflated and misleading.”

He twice said the United States needs a “steady hand at the tiller” in confronting foreign crises. I would refer readers to Matt Welch of Reason’s analysis of McCain’s frequently uncool hand.

Finally, in answering the final, zen-like question, “What don’t you know and how will you learn it?” McCain responded, “what the unexpected will be.” Very true. He didn’t indicate how he will learn it, but presumably the linear progression of time will take care of that.

So, how did McCain fare? Overall, it was probably a draw. There wasn’t a clear win on either side. Will tonight’s performance be shifting the polls tomorrow? Not likely — and because McCain came into the debate desperately needing a decisive victory, with just one more debate remaining, the lack of one would constitute a defeat.