Today was the day for me. It’s the first day in which all three-day polls would fully include the Palin-Biden VP debate. Everyone else is talking about the Ayers-Keating stuff, and yes, it’s refreshing to see the Democratic ticket throw some really heavy blows. But I’ve been waiting for the first day of polls to encompass purely post debate reaction.

The blogosphere was hoping for some political kamikaze from Palin on stage. A bright shining moment crystallized on the televisions of the nation, forever remembered as the day the Republican ticket of lies and deceit was brought crashing down.

While we didn’t get a “moment,” the effect of the debate was much the same. Nobody bothered to see it, though. They were too busy waiting for a puddle beneath Palin’s feet, or an accelerated exit stage right, hands over mouth. That would have been the glorious end so many sought. But what everyone forgot is that even though the expectation bar for her was set astonishingly low, the expectation bar for the position of Vice President never wavered.

So, it was with great pleasure that today’s polls all show more movement towards Obama, and more movement away from McCain. The CW says debates don’t really matter. But for the exact same reason the debate mattered for Obama—it legitimized him as a candidate—it mattered for Palin. The debate exposed Palin as a fraud. She wasn’t just an earnest candidate out of her league, she was padding her resumé and flirting with the boss. She was willfully trying to dupe her way into the job.

It’s no accident this was the most watched Veep debate in history. People wanted a train wreck. Palin instead provided a kitschy, saccharine monologue of pre-scripted moments recited in both appropriate and inopportune times. She showed them a candidate with no deference to the rules, declaring she would ignore moderator Gwen Ifill when she so chose. This wasn’t a debate for her, it was a pageant, where all of America would fall in love with her. It takes an unblinking narcissism to believe that; I’m willing to bet Mrs. Christianist calls it the power of Jesus.

To Democrats, it was sickening. To Republicans, it was satisfactory in so far as “Use Your Words” Palin was no more. They could falsify support for this candidate and not exceed their allowed spectrum of absurdity. America in general, however, viewed it through a different lens completely.

There is a way to charm, and it involves not letting people in on the game. Palin was a flop sweat of charm, unblinking in her drive to tell America “I’m just like you.” What she didn’t realize is Americans don’t like being told they’re ignorant, and that’s exactly what she was saying. It wasn’t stardust she was beaming through our television sets, it was empty shells of rhetoric and condescension.

People across America were saying quietly “I’m not this vapid. I wouldn’t be this glib about the responsibility before me.” All the while she kept hammering on. The words were there, but the tone was discordant. Her inability to balance this of-the-people act with actual policy and judgment decisions sealed her fate; not as a blubbering idiot, as the Couric interviews would have you believe, but as an empty machination of the McCain campaign; stuffed with zingers, void of solutions, and set to kill.

She was full-automatic on that stage, her suit deftly covering her wind-up key. She was completely unable to parry and thrust when the conversation called for improvisation, so she kept soldiering on in the only direction she knew. Her mission was to wink to Joe Sixpack, find 5-6 times to say Maverick, and murder the “say-it-ain’t-so, Joe” line we all knew was coming, Black Sox be damned.

All of this was noticed by the public at large. To all but the dire Republicans willing to sell everything to save their political souls, Palin is a farce. She’s a caricature of what it means to be folksy. Her winks and colloquialisms were all used as tools, and not integrated with her character. She was a simulacrum of Joe-Ann Sixpack, simultaneously mocking her target and pandering to them.

There was a moment when she could have nailed the entire evening though. Joe Biden gave her an opening to cut the strings and become a real girl. When he talked about losing his wife, and standing vigil by his son’s bed, he gave Palin an opening to show compassion, empathy, and grace. Her programming dictated otherwise. Instead of offering some form of condolences to Biden, she immediately went back to her Maverick lines; this particular talking point’s switch being flipped by some benign key word in Biden’s remarks. That was the instant she lost America. A glimpse of genuine humanity could have vindicated a night of robotics. Instead, it simply drove the image home.

Even with the economic swansong occuring, don’t underestimate the effect Palin has had on John McCain’s hopes. While a Veep candidate might not make it easier for you to vote for a ticket, it sure can make it easier to vote against a ticket, and shes’s been driving people away since the day after the convention. The floor’s the limit.

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