By Daniel D'Addario

There’s something compelling about the appeal of nostalgia. And the Democratic National Convention, which prepares to bring in a candidate Thursday night whose sole purpose was to change the conversation, has fallen back a bit on reflecting on past glories.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s rallying cry since she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic standard-bearer has been, “We are not going back.” Her meaning is well taken: The nation, she says, should not return to the days of the Trump presidency. But the convention built around her, and supported by figures from Democratic Party history, seems to be built around a different slogan. It has so far evoked the famous line from the drama “Lost”: “We must go back!”

There’s nothing unusual about packing a political convention with former party potentates. It’s partly meant to be a celebration of past glories that can perhaps be recaptured. But the balance seems to be off. Hillary Clinton’s speech was for a while a well-delivered tribute to Harris; elsewhere it was a recapitulation of the former secretary of state’s own campaign career and moments in the sun. Her speech made room for references to both “It Takes a Village” and her 2016 concession speech; it ended with her walking offstage to “Fight Song.” (In a sense, it was her Eras Tour condensed into 15 minutes or so.) Bill Clinton’s speech was meant to bolster the Harris-Walz ticket, read largely as a farewell address for Bill Clinton, and recalled the famous incident that made him famous at the 1988 DNC when he delivered the keynote address as governor of Arkansas and ran wildly over the clock.