A far cry from '04

A few short years ago, you nearly became the most powerful person on the planet.

You had that spectacular come-from-behind victory for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. In Ohio, only 60,000 votes stood between you and the White House.

Now you're facing your first primary opponent in 24 years - a scrappy former firefighter and lawyer from Gloucester named Ed O'Reilly. You're cutting ribbons and presenting senior citizens awards in Agawam, and Walpole, and Danvers, and ducking the relentless long shot when he tries to buttonhole you at community events.

Primary fights are good, and part of the healthy democracy you ran to defend.

But some people are quite pleased to see you in this uncomfortable position for other reasons.

This is partly because you came out early for Barack Obama, angering the state's Hillary Clinton supporters.

Some of them decided to stick it to you at the state party convention, helping O'Reilly win 23.4 percent of the delegates.

Governor Deval Patrick supported Obama, too, but he and the nominee are buddies, so the Clinton loyalists didn't punish him. Ted Kennedy did, too, but how could they punish Teddy?

You are not Teddy. If you had a buck for every time somebody reminded you of that, they'd be calling Teresa the gold-digger.

You don't do yourself any favors sometimes. You can be remote. Somnolent. You wear your ambition on your sleeve. Also you are very rich and tall and not cuddly. These things annoy people.

You also have the misfortune of being a member of a party that seems to want to put its losing presidential candidates on ice floes and shove them off toward what is left of the Arctic.

For all of these reasons, you get the bejesus kicked out of you.

For example, you pose with a group of drunken party-boaters in Nantucket, one of whom is drinking from a straw shaped like a penis, and there's a scandal. You didn't check the straws. You didn't card the girls. You smiled and went on your way. But they plastered your awkward, smiling mug all over the place.

If you had refused the photograph, the party boaters would have called you a snob, just like so many others do.

Still, despite all of this, you're cutting a pretty impressive profile lately, having declined to step onto the ice floe.

You're more of a force as an Obama surrogate than you were as a presidential candidate.

You're blasting your erstwhile friend John McCain for abandoning so much of what he once stood for with his run for president.

You've been loyal to your party, flying around the country and raising millions to help elect other Democrats, even after giving up on another presidential run of your own.

And even though you still get grief for your constituent services, you have 14 workers in Massachusetts working 800 cases a month for veterans and immigrants and fans who wanted the Patriots' last game of the season to be broadcast outside I-495.

A lot of people are saying you've got a chance to be secretary of state, or defense, if Obama wins. You bat back that talk, knowing that your critics would accuse you of using your office as a stepping stone, even after 24 years, if you didn't.

You brought down the house in Denver a couple of weeks back.

"This election is a chance for America to tell the merchants of fear and division, you don't decide who loves this country, you don't decide who is a patriot, you don't decide whose service counts," you said.

Ten days later you were in a TV studio doing a 19-minute debate with O'Reilly, to be broadcast locally at 8:30 on a Sunday morning.

You're John Kerry, and you're running for US Senate.

But even though you'll win, you can't win. And for no good reason.

Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. Her e-mail is abraham@globe.com.