OPINION — It’s hard not to feel a little sorry for John Hickenlooper. He did everything you’re supposed to do to become a White House contender. First, he started a successful business in Colorado — one of the first brewpubs around. He then launched a long-shot bid for Denver mayor, which he won. He was reelected four years later with 86 percent of the vote.

Then it was on to eight years as Colorado’s governor. Along with overseeing nearly a decade of a booming state economy, he also racked up Democrat-favored legislative wins from expanding Medicaid to passing gun safety measures limiting high-capacity magazines and requiring background checks to reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas industry. By the time he left the governor’s mansion earlier this year, Colorado had 500,000 more new jobs than when he was first sworn in. So hello, top-tier presidential campaign, amiright? Uh, no.

I met Hickenlooper recently in South Carolina when I was standing with my friend and CQ Roll Call colleague, Walter Shapiro, at the back of a convention hall where 22 of the 24 Democratic presidential candidates were speaking on a single Saturday at the state party’s annual convention.

While Walter and I were visiting, we saw Hickenlooper casually stroll past in not-quite-pressed khakis and a blue blazer. He was eating strawberry Twizzlers and going completely unrecognized by the assembly of thousands of devoted Democratic activists. “Wasn’t that John Hickenlooper?” I asked the man next to me. “Who?” he said. Oeuff.

Walter went up to speak to Hickenlooper, since he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to be any place else, and he asked the former governor how it was all going. It was going OK, Hickenlooper said. He understood that it was hard for voters to suss it all out, since there were more than 20 résumés to wade through. Then he added, with a frustration anyone could understand, “The fact that I’ve done all the things that the others just talk about should set me apart. But not yet.”