The last time Hillary Clinton appeared in person before a Democratic National Convention, the year was 2016, the city was Philadelphia and Mrs. Clinton was accepting her party’s nomination to run for president in what her audience thought would be a shoo-in of a race against Donald J. Trump.
“Standing here as my mother’s daughter, and my daughter’s mother, I’m so happy this day has come,” Mrs. Clinton, the first woman nominated for president by a major party, said that night.
Eight years later, Mrs. Clinton came out of semiretirement to return to a Democratic convention, this time in Chicago, to celebrate a woman — Kamala Harris — who is trying to do what Ms. Clinton was unable to do: win. It was a generational handoff at a convention that has become all about generational change, from a 76-year-old former first lady to the 59-year-old vice president.
But it was also a poignant reminder of how close Mrs. Clinton came to breaking the “highest and hardest glass ceiling,” as she had put it in her concession speech.
