It is difficult, 20 years on, to say which is more unlikely: that flip-flopping, wind-surfing, “Jinjis” Khan-pronouncing John Kerry came within an Ohio whisper of the White House or that Kerry’s rebuke proceeded in large part from a bevy of cheesed-off veterans. Politics change in two decades, of course, and my guess is that the presidential nomination process has produced its last patrician Bay Stater for some time. Yet the real development since 2004 is the sheer improbability now of what Kerry’s onetime comrades in arms pulled off.