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I don’t know what a Latin mass baptism is like. I’ve never —

I’ve been to one. It’s just got more exorcisms.

[GASPS]

Like more anti-Satan material.

Haven’t we all been to one? And it is called —

“The Godfather.”

—“The Godfather.” That ended well.

Yes.

“The Godfather” should not be our source.

Especially not that scene. [LAUGHS]

From New York Times Opinion, I’m Ross Douthat.

I’m Michelle Cottle.

I’m Carlos Lozada.

And I’m Lydia Polgreen.

And this is “Matter of Opinion.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

And the news this week is that Joe Biden is still losing the 2024 presidential election. There’s a new Times/Siena poll out this week showing Trump still leading in five battleground states. And notably, Biden’s numbers are worse in Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona, while Trump is still winning a surprisingly large share of younger African-American and Hispanic voters.

Notably, these are precisely the demographics that Joe Biden was hoping to shore up around this time four years ago when he selected California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. Last week, we talked about Trump’s VP shortlist. So this week, we want to talk first about Biden’s polling struggles, but then also whether Vice President Harris is part of the problem or if she could be part of the solution. But let’s start with the polls. Was anybody surprised by the Times/Siena results?

Well, I don’t think it was very different, right? I mean, it’s not like there was a huge shift.

Yeah, it doesn’t seem like there’s been a tremendous amount of movement. I think one thing that just seems really striking is, despite all of the discussion about the role that the war in Gaza and all of the campus activism and pro-Palestine activism, the uncommitted movement, all of that seemed to be something that could pose a significant threat to Biden. I don’t know that we’re seeing in this poll a ton of evidence to support that this is really costing him, which is actually not that surprising. Foreign policy is almost never a top issue.

The one thing that was also really striking is that the place where Biden is doing best is Michigan, which is, I believe, the state with the largest proportion of Arab-American voters and was really kind of an epicenter of the uncommitted movement. So that’s something that really struck me.

This is great. This is sunny side up, silver lining territory for Joe Biden. It could be so much worse.

There’s a campaign slogan.

Yes.

OK, I’ll go a little sunny side down.

Please. Yeah.

Eeyore. Let’s go, Eeyore.

I don’t know what the opposite of sunny side up is. Over medium for Joe Biden?

[CLEARS THROAT]: We’re gonna stage the butter battle book.

I mean, I think this has always felt like it was going to be a very close election, and I’m sure it still will be. So anything that shows a consistent direction or preference is interesting to me — not to get too horse racey, because that’s bad, God forbid. But with the caveat that it’s very early, this —

It’s not. It’s not very early.

It’s May. The election’s in November.

I want to deny that caveat.

It’s May. The election’s in November. It is early, but Trump isn’t just leading in five out of the six swing states. He’s leading by quite a bit, by at least seven percentage points in four of those states. These aren’t like margin of error leads, right? And it’s happening at a moment when Trump is basically having to campaign outside courtrooms with occasional rallies thrown in. So we can say, not much to see here. It sort of feels like the same, but it feels the same in the sense that it looks good for Donald Trump.

Well, the thing that I think the Biden team should be super nervous about that you’re seeing in these polls is the consistent sense that stuff needs to change. A change election is bad for the incumbent. This is not about a particular policy. This is not about a particular scandal. This is just a general sense that there needs to be some significant shift. And Trump obviously is the guy who’s more likely to blow stuff up.

And I think what’s striking, though, is that it’s change at the top of the ticket because the numbers for the Senate seats that are included in the poll actually look not amazing, but pretty good for the Democrats, who are trying to win seats. There’s a lot of evidence in here that there are Democratic voters who are quite happy to stick with the party, but for the top of the ticket, are open to kind of going nuclear. And that, to me, is pretty fascinating.

Well, the other thing that I find just kind of intriguing is people talk about how Trump has changed all the rules. He’s blown up all the knowns about politics, but with this dynamic, I actually see a couple of political fundamentals that are holding. They’re just combining in a weird way. One is, you tend to have buyer’s remorse with presidents. You see this in the midterm election where the out-of-power party tends to do better. And you combine that with the nostalgia that people often get for the preceding administrations.

It’s that kind of, you’ve survived the past, and you look back on it, and it’s a little fuzzy, and it’s not as scary as it seemed at the time. So you have nostalgia for old administrations and buyer’s remorse for new ones. It’s just that usually those old administrations aren’t on the ticket.

Well, so this raises the question, like, to what extent is the Biden team actually worried by these kind of numbers? And there’s sort of a lively online debate about just that question. You have people saying, well, obviously, the Biden team is a bunch of political professionals. They understand the situation. They’re working to turn it around.

But then you also have, for instance, a piece in Axios just the other day, quoting insiders saying, Biden and his advisors just don’t really believe the poll, right, and think that they’re going to be on track to win.

Their phrase is “we don’t ride the poller coaster,” which is adorable. And yet —

Did they really say that?

Oh, yes. They’re really saying that.

Yeah, someone thought of that and thought like, that’s gold! I’m gonna use that.

That’s —

Groan.

Right?

Oof.

At the same time, though, if you talk to people working with the campaign or on the campaign or whatever, they are excruciatingly aware of needing to reach out and fire up certain demographics that tend to be among their base. You know, like they are very concerned about how to reach young Black men, how to get the point across that this is an important election, things like that. They will talk to you about what needs to be done, even as they’ll dismiss polls.

Well, OK, so let’s talk about those demographics with which the Biden campaign is down, because the idea that Biden has a problem winning or exciting young Black men, for instance, the idea that Hispanic voters in Arizona and Nevada are turning to Trump, because that connects, obviously, to the woman with whom Joe Biden is running. Biden chose Kamala Harris as a running mate in 2020 as a very explicit representation of the Democratic Party’s multiracial future. Right? That was sort of the core idea.

Obviously, it went beyond that, and there was a sense around the George Floyd protests that Biden absolutely had to pick an African-American running mate. He’d sort of narrowed his choices to a group of African-American women. But more broadly, there was an idea that the vice presidential candidate was the candidate of the multiracial future. So was that theory right at the time? How is that theory working out? Would anyone argue it is working?

It’s hard to argue that it’s working. And I think one of the reasons that it is not working is that I don’t think that identity works in quite the way that they seem to be attempting to make it work in this case. It’s actually quite a complex thing, the notion of identifying with someone because they share a background with you. We’re all individuals, and, you know, we all have different experiences. There are lots of different kinds of Black people in America. There are lots of different kinds of Hispanic people in America. These are not monolithic identities.

And I was struck listening to the interview that our colleague in the newsroom, Astead Herndon, did with Kamala Harris by actually, like, how unusual and sort of biracial and bicultural Kamala Harris’s identity is, and whether that might actually be a place where it has been quite difficult for it to translate.

And you think about the one Black president that we’ve had was also biracial, but he was married to a Black American woman, who was clearly instrumental in building a bridge between his very unusual life story and upbringing and the core Black American experience. And so I think this identity stuff is actually incredibly complex and very, very tricky. And the assumption that having someone who represents a, quote unquote, “multiracial”— and she is quite literally multiracial.

She is multiracial.

It’s just not going to automatically resonate with someone who’s like, oh, yeah, this person looks like me. Because the truth is, she doesn’t look like anybody except herself.

There have been lots of awkward pairings on presidential tickets, right? Like, McCain-Palin was a very painful pairing to watch.

They were two mavericks.

Were they?

Two outside of — what do you mean, “awkward?” It was chemistry.

Oh, yeah, yeah. You can —

Synergy.

You can tell in all the memoirs after the fact that they just loved each other.

They clicked.

But this [? synog-asy. ?]

The Biden-Harris ticket never really felt a particularly natural pairing. It was very much the product of a moment. If it’s not summer 2020, I really don’t think Harris is on the ticket. I remember Amy Klobuchar, who wanted to be on the ticket, saying, look, it can’t be me. It’s got to be a woman of color. Jill Biden didn’t even like her, saying like, why are we gonna pick the one person who’s been —

Been mean to Joe.

— critical of — who’s attacked Joe? Everyone remembers that that great moment, depending on your point of view — for me, it’s great because it was so awkward. That moment when —

That says a lot about you, Carlos.

Oh, I love witnessing other people’s awkwardness, like in my presence. It’s —

Good to know.

But no, when she says, listen, Joe, I don’t think you’re a racist, which is a great way to get other people to think that he might be a racist, right? So it was just a very strange connection.

To question if it’s been successful, it depends on how you define success in a very poorly defined job. If the idea is that she was going to sustain and broaden this, quote, “multiracial coalition,” that the coalition of the ascendant carrying the party into the future, that doesn’t necessarily seem to have been the case. These polls suggest that if success was appeasing the kind of activist base that was so mobilized in that moment, I don’t think that’s necessarily worked either. She’s not a natural activist.

Well, she’s a former prosecutor. And that was part of the question when she had her own presidential campaign, was the kind of lackluster reception she was receiving among some of the activist base in the Democratic Party.

Yeah, I mean, look, she ran for president, and it didn’t go well. That’s the bottom line, right?

That’s charitable. It went very poorly.

Yeah, I mean, I think it didn’t go well. And if I recall correctly, I think she dropped out rather than face losing her own state. But I think she was quite successful as a state-level politician in California. She was very effective as a prosecutorial presence in the Senate. She had a number of these kind of viral moments. And she’s exhibited real charisma and sharpness. It utterly failed to translate onto the presidential stage. And I am not sure what the Biden team saw that they thought would overcome all of those things and make her effective as a vice president.

Well, let’s talk about the way they’ve used her. It is, of course, a predictable feature of American politics that the vice president gets either meaningless portfolios or totally thankless portfolios. So she was handed the job of going to Central America and figuring out —

[INAUDIBLE]

— figuring out the immigration —

— crisis.

— crisis.

I mean, that was just Biden’s vengeance because Obama handed him the same job.

It’s hazing. It’s vice presidential hazing.

That’s just like — you know.

Yes. Well, I mean, I have sort of a question related to that. But the first question is that sort of since then, there’s been a shift towards, I would say, basically using her as a tribune for socially liberal causes, pro-choice politics above all. She’s on a fight for reproductive freedoms tour, which is also a customary way of using a vice president to do shoring up the base kind of work. I mean, do you guys think that has worked well? Do you think of her as a effective tribune for elevating and highlighting the pro-choice cause?

Part of it is because Biden’s not necessarily a natural voice himself on those issues. So, whether she’s been effective in elevating the cause, she’s been effective in taking that off Biden’s plate, doing things that he’s not necessarily a natural for. I think she’s definitely useful for Joe Biden to not have to be kind of like awkwardly discussing abortion.

Yeah, and I think that she’s actually a really effective messenger for this issue. I mean, she is a woman who’s had a really big career, embodies the sort of modern woman of our generation, right, who’s been in charge, been in control of her life. And I think her life experiences speak a lot to the type of women, suburban female voters, who you want to really rally and keep on sides on this issue.

The question that I have is I don’t know that those voters were actually at risk, right? And the places where there is greater vulnerability, for example, with young men of color, I actually don’t know that she is a particularly effective surrogate. And I don’t know that the messages that she’s out there with are going to draw them back in. In fact, I shouldn’t say I don’t know. I feel quite certain that they won’t.

I just want to push on the issue question right here, because Matt Iglesias, a frequent commentator on intra-Democratic debates, has repeatedly made the argument that the persona that Harris had in California, the sort of prosecutorial figure, which was a persona that she extended in certain ways in the Senate, but then had to run away from as a presidential candidate because she could be attacked from the left on criminal justice issues.

Iglesias’s argument is that that persona is actually what the Democratic ticket needs. Instead of a vice president who is out there sort of shoring up the base, whether it’s on abortion rights or voting rights or anything like this, you want Kamala the cop, who’s saying, we’re going to be tough on the border. We’re going to be tough on crime. You can trust us, centrist, moderate voters. And I, as a former prosecutor, can be that sort of tough-minded Democrat, because that clearly has not been a mode that they’ve really even tried to operate in.

There are ways in which she brings that sort of prosecutorial zeal to the discussions of abortion, for instance. She’s not out there sort of saying, like, as a woman, X, Y, or Z. She’s kind of like taking it to Trump, pointing him out as the guilty party here. She’s picked a specific way to talk about abortion that can, in some ways, be her own.

But this whole conversation about Harris is pivoting back and forth between who she really might be and who the administration needs her to be. And that uncertainty, that haziness about someone’s true posture and true positions, I think, becomes evident in just the way someone like Harris moves in the world of politics. She’s awkward in speeches. She’s awkward taking reporters’ questions.

She’s prickly.

It feels kind of unnatural, right? And I remember in her memoir, she talked about that tension, the way she resolved it. She was never, like, hardcore activist base. She was an institutionalist, right? She said, when activists come banging on the door, I want to be inside listening to them and helping open those doors. She’s kind of in between. She’s not like the full-on wonk. She’s not the full-on activist. And when she fully tries to embrace one of those personas, it doesn’t feel quite real.

I think that also reflects there’s just a confusion in the Democratic Party about what it means to be the party of the multiracial future. Does that mean the multiracial future as defined by — to cite that quote — the activist groups that tend to say, we are speaking for Hispanics, African-Americans, recent immigrants, women, and so on?

Or does it mean recognizing that, oftentimes, the wider population of those groups don’t have views that align with the activists? And so maybe to be multiracial, you have to be more the centrist? I think she’s sort of walking along that tension in the Democratic Party’s own self-understanding.

Well, we do have the generational split that you see in, for instance, the Times/Siena poll, where it’s not just that younger Black voters have a problem with Biden, it’s that all younger voters have a problem with Biden. It’s just more stark when you’re talking about a demographic group that was traditionally so overwhelmingly Democratic.

But Harris, much like Biden, isn’t the kind figure geared to excite younger voters who, they want to see some real change, feisty, blow-it-up revolution, in many cases, which is not what, say, older Black voters want to see. They tend to be vastly more moderate or conservative than the activist base of the Democratic Party. So, yes, the generational split is where I think this ticket has a real problem.

Well, and it represents these sort of two passing generations. I personally believe that we’ll never have a Gen X president. I’m just quite certain that it’s going to pass this over.

Which would only be appropriate.

We’re just grateful to be here.

Yeah, I feel like just a tremendous amount of identification with Kamala Harris, and maybe this is a little overdetermined, just because, like me, she’s a biracial, multicultural Gen X woman who’s also Black. And, in my own sort of small way, I see a lot of her struggles and see them as my own.

And you look at the generation of, quote unquote, “multiracial” political talents who are coming up behind, and the amount of freedom, the amount of looseness, and also excitement that they’re able to generate because they’re not operating within the same binary sets of rules, that I feel that my generation of Black women operated within. I mean, I look at — and obviously, she’s just a very unique generational talent.

But I look at somebody like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the just level of excitement that she has been able to generate as a woman, as a person of color, as a progressive Democrat, who has also, I think, shifted pretty considerably in how she operates within the inside of the Democratic Party, it’s just like impossible for me to imagine Kamala Harris playing any sort of politics successfully that looks anything like what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez does. I’m not saying that that’s what Biden needs in order to win. But I think that if you’re looking for excitement, if you’re looking for something that feels like a forward-looking vision of the future for the Democratic Party, that doesn’t feel like a register that Kamala Harris can naturally inhabit.

All right. Well, we’re going to take a break. And when we come back, I just want to focus in on the aspect of Harris’s unpopularity that doesn’t seem perfectly captured by any kind of analysis of her positioning — the Dan Quayle factor, let’s call it — in her difficulties. So we’ll be on that theme when we come back.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So let’s talk about the central problem of the Harris vice presidency, which is not her policy stance. It’s not necessarily how the Biden administration has used her, but just the idea that has taken hold of her, sort of, let’s say, absurdity as a political figure. And I’m going to use a listener’s comment to start us off on this conversation. This is Maureen from Colorado, who wrote in to us and said, “Hi, team. Love the show.”

Thank you, Maureen.

We love you, too, Maureen. Maureen, we love you.

We love you.

She says, “I’m a ‘good liberal,’” in quotes, “and I feel like I’ve drank the Kamala Harris equals not good Kool-Aid. Why? Why do we hate Kamala Harris? Am I racist? Sexist? I sure don’t think so. But even the liberals and intellectuals and the chattering class all seem to have dismissed her.” So what do you guys think? Why do we hate Kamala Harris? Because there is something more here than just another vice president struggling with their positioning.

I just want to say for the record, I do not hate Kamala Harris.

You don’t hate Kamala Harris.

I don’t think any of us hate Kamala Harris.

You identify with her.

I identify with her.

Why do we hate Lydia Polgreen, I think, is the question.

If you hate Kamala, then you hate me.

We hate you.

I’m sorry. Yeah, yeah.

So, look, I have done a lot of digging over the years into the whole question of unconscious bias with women in executive political leadership or even executive business leadership. And it becomes incredibly hard to parse. But there is definitely something there. There’s a much narrower lane for women leaders of what is acceptable than there is for men who kind of look straight out of central casting, as a certain former president likes to say.

But you saw it with Hillary Clinton to a certain degree. And what you hear a lot of times is like, oh, I don’t have a problem with women leaders. I just have a problem with this woman leader. And it kind of comes through in things like both Hillary and Kamala got smacked for their laugh, the cackle. The word “cackle” is just kind of a red flag on a lot of these things.

So this is not to say that it is entirely sexism. I am not going there, but I am saying that it does become really hard to tell where that line is between, I don’t quite like the way she laughs or the way she talks or the way she jokes or whatever, and something specific to her or her gender.

Actually, I find it so interesting that in her question itself, Maureen from Colorado anticipates exactly what you are saying. Right? I’m a good liberal. And as a good liberal, she asks, am I racist? Am I sexist?

No, she’s not being racist or sexist.

Yeah, well, that’ll be reassuring to Maureen. I don’t think that being disappointed by a politician necessarily means that you hate whatever identity marker you find most salient in that politician. I know you guys mock me for bringing up books, but Hillary’s “What Happened” book does a really good job picking apart how all those factors affected her campaign in 2016. More than one thing can be true at the same time. I think it’s unambiguously clear that Kamala Harris is not terrific in the settings in which most people draw their conclusions about politicians. You get the classic thing you hear about men and women who are not good in public. We’re like, they’re better in small groups.

Oh, that was Al Gore.

Better on group podcasts.

Better in small groups, always.

Al Gore was so good in small groups.

That is gender neutral, damning with faint praise.

Then he should be a school board member.

Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because I think, again, this legibility question is really important, and this doesn’t really matter for the average voter because they’re not huge consumers of social media or of memes as we are, but Kamala as meme maker and not in a good way is like a real phenomenon. And there’s one that really stood out to me in a set of remarks — you know about the coconut tree thing? Have you guys heard about this?

You’re going to have to refresh us.

I’m the extremely online person, right?

You are so online.

Well, there have been a number of memes.

A nubmer of memes. She’s clapping along to the people in Puerto Rico who are protesting against her, not realizing that that’s what’s going on.

Oh.

That was one of them, which was like straight out of “Veep.” But the coconut tree one was really striking to me because, again, it comes back to the way that her identities don’t neatly map onto our expectations here in the United States. And I’m just going to read what she said in that speech. She says, my mother used to say — she would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.

Now, Kamala Harris’s mother is originally from India, right? I lived in India for three years. And to me, I heard that, and I was like, oh, that is like an Indian auntie kind of thing to say. Like, it was totally legible to me. I think to a lot of Americans, here’s this woman who you think of as a Black woman. You’re like, wait, why are you talking about coconut trees? This is like a zen koan. I think it’s just like not good politics, right, to use a phrase that is just not going to be legible to your audience.

But I really do think there’s something about her, her sort of mixed cultural heritage, her set of references that just makes it very hard to translate. So I don’t know. I think like, again, I feel this deep sense of identification and understanding where she comes from, while also recognizing that these things alienate people.

I already dropped the Dan Quayle analogy, but I want to go back to it because I think that is actually what we’re talking about here. And I, of course, identify with Dan Quayle, right, as a very handsome and intelligent white male —

Great hair.

Great head of hair.

— with a great head of hair, who any politician seeking sort of youthful energy would want on their ticket. And joking aside, that is when George H.W Bush picked Dan Quayle, he thought he was picking a young, Jack Kennedy-esque, handsome future of the Republican Party kind of figure, giving his ticket a big infusion of youth. It was not the same dynamic as Biden picking Harris, but it was not completely different, right?

And then in practice, Quayle became a meme. The potato misspelling is the most famous incident. But who among us has not, in some context, had a commonplace word that might misspell?

To this day, I freak out when I have to spell “potato.”

I mean, there are reasons that there are common misspellings, right? Let’s speak up for Dan Quayle. Dan Quayle was not as stupid and ridiculous a figure by any means as the meme of Dan Quayle became. But it didn’t matter because he had something intangible in his essence that just —

What? Sounds like precious bodily fluids.

Purity of essence.

But I think this is true.

Purity of essence.

I don’t think you can distill in a perfect way why Dan Quayle became Dan Quayle or why Kamala Harris has become Kamala Harris without talking about some indefinable aspect of political charisma that when it doesn’t work, it just really doesn’t work.

Oh, totally true.

You think you’re getting a symbol, but you’re actually just getting a person, a person who may be more politically talented or less politically talented than others. And it’s a little on Biden in the sense that — so Obama needed Biden in ways that were both substantive and symbolic. Obama was sort of — yeah, he was a senator, but kind of a neophyte in the Senate to Washington. Biden had all the old relationships. He knew everyone. That’s the substance.

Symbolically, he needed him to reassure people who were like, who the hell is this Barack Obama guy? And Biden is like part of the Washington furniture. He’s been there forever. But Biden, I don’t think, has ever felt that he needs Kamala Harris in a substantive way. The way she’s had to shoulder this whole time has been symbolic.

Well, I think it’s also striking in the Obama-Biden example that Obama was a Black man needing a white man to vouch for him. And the dynamic is just different when you’ve got, like, this Black person is going to cover a flank for me, and also, this person is a woman. And the dynamics of it just feel like completely different than they did, because, ultimately, the more powerful position is the presidency. And it would have been on Biden, I think, to kind of level that playing field somewhat. And I think he did not do that.

He tried in some ways, but it didn’t last, and it didn’t really work. Like, Obama would often say, “my vice president,” which really irked Joe Biden. And Biden is careful to say, “the vice president,” right, saying, like, this is an important office in its own right. But they were supposed to have weekly meetings, Biden and Harris.

Did the president call? Isn’t that the line from “Veep“?

That’s, did the president call? Right, and those meetings kind of fell off the schedule. One of the shortest chapters in Frank Foer’s book about the Biden presidency is about Kamala Harris, right? There wasn’t a lot there.

Aw.

Mm.

That’s like the saddest sentence you could utter.

Oh, gosh.

The shortest chapter in the book.

I didn’t say the shortest, one of the shorter chapters.

One of the shortest, OK. Still, it’s sad. All right, so let’s end on a constructive note. There’s some time before the election. If you’re Kamala Harris, if you’re Joe Biden, if you’re the Biden campaign, what does success look like? Is there some model that could work?

Wait, for Kamala?

For Kamala.

They do need to send her out, whipping up voters on reproductive rights. I think that that is actually a very good use of her time, especially because he’s so awkward on it. And it is a hugely mobilizing issue for not just Democrats, but soft Republicans, independents, swing voters. So that seems like a perfectly good use of her skills.

In this case, I remember our colleague Ezra Klein a much discussed sort of audio essay a few months ago where he suggested that Biden might be sort of equipped to govern for a second term, but isn’t necessarily equipped to campaign for a second term. And I’m wondering, in sort of the best case scenario for the Democrats, if it might be the other way around for Kamala Harris.

She might be better at campaigning for the second term than she actually has been in carving out a distinctive governance role. I think the abortion rights message, as you said, Ross, that’s something on which she’s not going to create a whole lot of new voters. But it is mobilizing. It helps with fundraising.

And I find it interesting that her message now to Black voters isn’t racial justice and voting rights and policing, it’s economic opportunity, right? It’s much more brass tacks, this economic opportunity tour that she’s doing. It’s far more specific than the more amorphous activist message. And I think she’s more comfortable in that kind of role than in the other.

Yeah, I would say that if there were one place where she could bring her prosecutorial, like, “I’m a tough person” persona back, it actually might be in speaking to voters about immigration because I think there actually is a hunger for a more sort of, like, realistic policy message. And the fact that she has a track record of having said some pretty tough things might actually play to her strengths and get her out of this weird identitarian role that I think she actually is not very well equipped to play.

So these are places where she has been strong in the past, but her strength hasn’t necessarily been matched correctly with opportunity. And this might be surprisingly a place where you can point the finger at Republicans and be like, look, there are lots of ways that we’ve tried to toughen things up or make changes or do these things. I went to Latin America. I told people, do not try to come. You will not be allowed in. And I think that that’s actually a message that could play well with nonwhite voters.

I would only add to that the biggest stage that she will have this fall will be the vice presidential debate. There will be actually an opportunity for Harris to do maybe a version of what you just described, Lydia, sort of trying to turn the tables on Republicans, or maybe just trying to set up a contrast with whomever Trump has picked, on the assumption that some Americans will be casting a vote, fearing that, in voting for Biden, they’re voting for someone who could die in office. And it will make a difference how Harris appears.

I’m glad you raised the VP debate because in preparation for our conversation today, last night, I rewatched the scintillating Harris-Pence debate —

Oh, my God.

— from Utah in 2020.

What is wrong with you?

And it was really interesting. And I don’t think this election is going to be decided on the strength of the veeps. I think it’s ultimately going to be decided by the top of the ticket. That said, she was pretty good on that debate stage. She had a real mastery of details and issues. She was very smart about how she referred to people. Like, Biden was always Joe. Like, Joe and I this, and Joe and I that. Whereas Pence is always Michael Pence, the vice president, very formal and therefore unrelatable.

So to the extent that the veeps matter, I think she can perhaps be better at campaigning than governing. And to the extent that the debate matters, I think she showed herself to do really well the last time around.

But this time, she’ll be up against the raw charisma of Doug Burgum, and she won’t have a chance.

Stop it.

All right. We’re going to leave it there, and when we come back, one of us will get hot and cold.

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All right, guys, who has our Hot or Cold this week?

I am hot this week.

Ooh.

You are so —

Muy caliente.

Carlos so hot right now, yeah. So, listeners of the show may have developed the erroneous assumption that my primary obsessions are reading books by Jimmy Carter or something like that. But if you ask —

Erroneous.

Fully erroneous.

Erroneous.

If you ask my children, they would tell you that my true obsession and my primary cultural touchstone is the 1990s TV sitcom “Seinfeld.” I have watched every show multiple times. I own the DVD set. Google what DVD is, kids. And I inflict scenes from “Seinfeld” onto my kids multiple times a week.

Oh, that’s torture.

They’ll like it. A year ago, I actually — at least they tell me they like it.

They love it, Jerry.

I reviewed a book —

It’s gold.

— a book about the show called “Seinfeldia,” and I included a “Seinfeld” reference, either well-known or very obscure, in every sentence of the review. It’s still my masterpiece. “God spoke through my pen.” That’s another “Seinfeld” reference.

So all that to say is that I was kind of worried when I learned that Jerry Seinfeld was going to deliver the commencement address at Duke this year. Commencement addresses are a very stilted and sort of confining form, but I watched it and I liked it. It wasn’t super funny. It had some good moments, but it’s being shared on social media and the like, mainly for him pleading with the graduates to not lose their sense of humor. Right?

That part, I didn’t care for. But he said something else that the more I think about it, the more hot on it I am. He said, everyone tells you to follow your passions. I say, the hell with passion.

That may seem like a fake distinction, but I think it’s a smart distinction. I think passion can be very fleeting. Passions can ultimately disappoint you. Passions are often set against reason and justice, as Alexander Hamilton said in Federalist 15. But they can also leave you empty when they are unfulfilled, as they often are.

Fascination lasts longer because fascination is about learning. It’s about deepening knowledge, rather than just declaring it. It’s about process in its essence more than about outcome. And life is about process more than about outcome. It takes longer to write a book than to read it. It takes longer to record this podcast than it does to actually listen to it.

So I think that’s a great thing for young college graduates to hear, especially when they’ve always been told to follow their passions. So I’m hot on fascination over passion, on process over outcome, and on Jerry Seinfeld’s commencement address at Duke University, which I encourage you to watch.

I’m going to check it out. It sounds great. I have also given a commencement address, and it’s one of the most nerve wracking things I can imagine. It’s so terrifying. But I think most kids don’t really remember them. I can’t remember who spoke at my commencement.

Most kids are drunk during the commencement.

Where did you give the commencement address?

At the CUNY Journalism School, which was great.

That’s nice.

It’s a great school. I love it.

Very sensibly, no one lets me near students or give commencement speeches.

I have given the commencement address at my high school. That is the only —

Oh!

— commencement address —

That’s cool.

— I’ve ever given, and I think I killed it, honestly.

I think you did.

I thought I did.

I don’t think you should be the judge of that.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

I’m gonna bring the video. Is there video?

So, Ross, is there video?

It was some — it was some years ago. And it was before the internet. It was in 1933, Carlos, so nobody —

It was a crazy time.

Nobody knows what was said.

I don’t remember who spoke my year of graduation from college, but the year before me, the year that my wife graduated, William F. Buckley was the speaker.

Ooh, fancy.

Yeah.

Yes. That was back when they let conservatives give — oh, wait, yeah, never mind.

Oh.

Conservatives give better commencement addresses than liberals. I wrote a piece comparing collections of commencement addresses, and I found that conservatives were better.

Are you kidding me? You wrote —

Of course he did, Ross. Who are you talking to?

I am hot on Carlos’s essay comparing commencement addresses, which I am now going to go read, because that’s our show for the week. Thank you for listening. Just one brief personal announcement, which is that I will not be on the show for the next few weeks. I will be, God willing, taking some generous Times-provided paternity leave.

Woo-hoo.

Yay.

Congratulations.

Sleepless nights and podcast-free days. But I will miss all of you. And I’m sure that my place will be taken by some very engaging voices. So please tune in, and I’ll be back sometime hopefully in June.

We will miss you, Ross.

We’re gonna miss you, Ross, but also just absolutely wishing you all the joy for you and your family in this very, very exciting time.

Thanks, guys.

Take care.

Bye, guys.

See you. See you soon.

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Special thanks to everybody who called in and wrote in. And thanks to all the rest of you for listening. If you have a question you want us to wrestle with in the coming weeks, share it in a voicemail by calling 212-556-7440, or you can also email us at matterofopinion@nytimes.com.

“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Phoebe Lett, and Derek Arthur. It’s edited by Jordana Hochman. Our fact-check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. We have original music by Isaac Jones, Carole Sabouraud, Sonia Herrero, and Pat McCusker. Mixing this week by Sonia Herrero. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser.