"But it's not unique anymore. And it no longer brings anything truly amazing to the table that you can't find in a competitor language."

Name another multi-paradigm language with as broad, deep and well-tested library as CPAN.

"Unless a miracle happens, it will never return to dominance in anything other than niche domains (like quick-n-dirty commandline scripts)."

When has "dominance" (whatever that means) or popularity ever been the goal or desirable? I can't think of any language or system that is universally "dominant"; all have niches to work.

You don't get into programming because you want to do what all the cool kids are doing. Paul Graham (you might have heard of him, you're using his site) argued very well on the advantages of choosing above-average tools for above-average results. (http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html)