There’s something compelling about the allure of nostalgia. And the Democratic National Convention, as it prepares to, Thursday night, usher in a candidate whose entire purpose has been to change the conversation, has defaulted, a bit, to reflecting on past glories. Vice President Kamala Harris’ rallying cry, since she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democrats’ standard-bearer, has been “We’re not going back.
” Her meaning is well-taken — the nation, in her view, ought not return to the days of the Trump presidency. The convention built around her and buttressed with figures from Democratic Party history, though, has seemed built around a different catchphrase. It has so far recalled the famous line from the drama “Lost” — “We have to go back!” There’s nothing unusual about packing a political convention with former potentates from the party.
It’s meant, in part, as a celebration of past glories that might be reclaimed. But the balance has seemed badly off. Hillary Clinton ’s speech was, for a while, a well-delivered tribute to Harris; it was, elsewhere, a recapitulation of the former Secretary of State’s own electoral career and moments in the sun.
Her speech made room for references to both “It Takes a Village” and her 2016 concession speech; it concluded with her walking offstage to “Fight Song.” (In a way, it was her Eras Tour, condensed into a quarter-hour or so.) Bill Clinton’s speech meant to endorse the Harris-Walz ticket read primarily as a valedictory speech for Bill Clinton, and recalled the famous incident in which he famously bombed at the 1988 DNC, delivering the keynote address as Governor of Arkansas and running wildly over time.
But at least that convention made substantial time for a rising star! Similarly, 20 years ago, the DNC spotlit ascendant Illinois state senator Barack Obama, in the midst of his campaign for the U.S. Senate: His speech, about what unifies us as Americans regardless of party, supercharged his political career and sent him first to the Senate and then to the White House.
He was invited back in 2024, of course, and revisited many of the same themes, while also seeming to make a joke about the length of Trump’s genitalia. Not going back? We’re right back in it — the endless centering of the personalities in the Obama and Clinton families, with their various resentments and past political dramas, to the exclusion of other voices. (Incumbent President Joe Biden, pushed out of prime time on night one by a relentless parade of relative randoms but allowed the leeway to give a near-hourlong speech, chose to leave the scene after he spoke, missing his two fellow Democratic Presidents speaking.
) No newer voice at this convention has gotten an opportunity commensurate to what Obama got in 2024. Others, including Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, got their moments, but in all cases seemed to exist in the shadow of the major personalities on show. There were gestures toward giving a real star turn: New York Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez delivered a fiery and compelling speech on the convention’s first night. It might have been better expanded to 15 minutes, and closer to the new nominee’s ascendance. And on Wednesday night, Maryland Governor Wes Moore seemed every bit as assured and competent, but just plopped into a program that had no rhyme, reason, or — crucially — rhythm.
Nothing about any night of this convention has had what’s called “build”; it has just been speaker after speaker, burying new voices in a wall of noise, seemingly at random. It could be Pete Buttigieg walking out onstage; it could as easily be anyone else. The one thing viewers know is that the marquee speaker — on Monday, Joe Biden; on Wednesday, Tim Walz — will be pushed past 11 p.
m. on the east coast in favor of whatever mass of humanity the Democrats have assembled. There’s a certain desire, though, to avoid blaming the institutional Democrats: They simply cannot help themselves from going big and broad.
Emerging from a summer in which ascendant pop star Charli XCX deemed Harris’ campaign “Brat”-coded, the DNC decided to book Pink and John Legend ; the “celebrity hosts” over four nights included Kerry Washington and Tony Goldwyn, two stars of “Scandal,” which ended in 2018, and Ana Navarro, the Republican “View” co-host who achieved her peak of fame during the early days of the Trump administration, opposing the then-President. She’s a nostalgia act. There was a long speech from Oprah Winfrey, still decked out in “The Color Purple”-promotional violet she’d worn throughout this past winter’s awards season and surprisingly, for a generationally great communicator, unfocused.
Pared back, she might have placed Walz closer to prime time. Legacy acts sell records, but does any of this — Pink, Oprah, Bill Clinton, “Fight Song” — excite an 18-year-old in Milwaukee, Detroit, Phoenix, or Atlanta deciding whether or not to vote at all? It seems apparent that the breakout stars of this cycle are to be Harris and Walz themselves, with little room for error or for serendipity. (It’s worth stipulating that this viewer found Cole Emhoff’s video introducing Doug Emhoff, the husband of Kamala Harris, very cute — a moment of authenticity and contemporaneity amidst trappings imported from the years between 1992 and 2020.
) Providing all the currency of a convention is a lot for one candidate to bear. But Harris has already said she’s unburdened by what has been; perhaps, in burdening her with what looks a lot like what would have been a convention for a President first elected to the Senate in 1972, as Biden was, the Democratic Party has set up a test they trust she can pass..
