Kerry lost because he didn't sell himself hard enough.The only way to do that would have been to face hard questions about his past. He was never willing to do that. And he was right to avoid doing that. He would have lost by an even larger margin if he had tried to openly talk about who he really is and what he has really done over the years.
Kerry got the most votes he could possibly get in this country (and I suspect he didn't actually get 1-5% of the votes in his total). He got those votes by obscuring his identity. If he had made things more clear, he would have gotten fewer votes.
It's simply stunning the number of votes he did get. Then again, the Democrat party is just a conspiracy theory of keeping certain people in this country poor and stupid.