Look at the language they used:

"mingling" - he was at the World Economic Forum

"quixotic, last-minute effort" - but later in the article it says,  

Mr. Kerry has been rallying his supporters against the nomination for weeks in mass e-mail messages and on his Web site.

And when the Democratic caucus met Wednesday to discuss the nomination, he gave an impassioned plea that the party should try to stage a filibuster even if it failed

Which is it?  Last-minute or rallying for weeks?  The first claim was in the second paragraph, the facts were buried.

"cringed" - Did Kirkpatrick see them cringe?  Somehow I doubt it.  But it makes the effort seem silly and/or stupid.

"Republicans jeered at the awkwardness of his gesture..."

Sure, the Republicans would be ugly, it's what they do.  But the "awkwardness of the gesture?"  I find that unbelievably offensive.

There's a lot more.  I think this is a complete hatchet job and is more editorializing than reporting, IMHO.

btw, Kerry is flying back and will be in Washington tomorrow.

I agree with what BarbinMD said in her reply to your comment.  

I would also add that the fundamental rule in news writing is that most readers only read the headline and the first paragraph; a few read two paragraphs; almost noone reads the rest.

So this gives an artificial way for a reporter to be "fair and balanced": front load the first two paragraphs with the "hobnobbing", "cringed", "awkwardness".  Then maybe a couple of paragraphs from the end, start singing praises.  The number of "reader hits" to the biased language in the first two paragraphs is a couple of orders of magnitude higher than the number of "reader hits" on the penultimate paragraph of the piece.

And when attacked, the reporter can point to the penultimate paragraph to prove (s)he is "fair and balanced".  [Penultimate is hypothetical here.]

When I read the full story I find that Harry Reid opposes Kerry on this, and could reasonably be described as "cringeing." He is the only cringer in the article. I also learn that other Senate Democrats, speaking anonymously, say that the caucus decided against supporting a filibuster Wednesday, but that Durbin is supporting Kerry.

The real crime of the Times here is that it uses "Democrats" when it means "Democratic Senators." If you asked Kirkpatrick I'm sure that he would agree that the Democrats on DailyKos (cited in the story) and in activist groups strongly support the filibuster. But to the reader, there are only 44 "Democrats" and they all live in Washington DC.