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FRAMINGHAM, Mass. One of the most famous losers in recent U.S. politics is back on the campaign trail in Massachusetts.

It is not going as well as she had hoped.

Let me tell you something: Its a close race. And it is going to be very close on Election Day, Martha Coakley, the Democratic nominee for governor, told a crowd of about 80. For the second time in five years, Coakley was pleading for support trying desperately to beat a Republican in a state dominated by Democrats.

I need your help, Coakley said.

At that, for the first time during her stump speech, they cheered.

Four years ago, Coakley achieved unwanted national fame for managing to lose the seemingly unlosable race to replace a late Democratic icon, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. That campaign was a short, intense clinic in bungling: Coakley took a vacation in mid-campaign. She blasphemed a Red Sox icon who had supported her opponent, calling him a Yankees fan. And she didnt attack Republican challenger Scott Brown until he had surged in the polls, helped by voter unhappiness with President Obamas health-care bill.

Today, Coakley still the Massachusetts attorney general has a chance to redeem her reputation by becoming the states first elected female governor.

In this campaign, supporters say, Coakley has applied the lessons of that earlier disaster. She is shaking more hands, calling herself the outsider and aggressively attacking her Republican opponent as a coldhearted number-cruncher.

Nevertheless, the race is still effectively tied, with two weeks left.

Again, Coakley has been held back by a subdued campaign persona and a thin political agenda. And again by a perception that her party takes this seat and this state for granted.

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Democrat Martha Coakley struggles again on Massachusetts campaign trail