I don't think that anyone could have done better than Kerry did in 2004. Remember, Bush was at about 60 percent in December 2003. No one else could have completely blown Bush away in that first foreign policy debate.
As to the war vote, I had followed both of them from 2002 on. Dean supported at least as aggressive a position on Saddam as Kerry before the vote. He did say he would have voted for Biden/Lugar, but he did not have to vote. Not to mention, where Clinton and Edwards were fully behind the invasion, Kerry in January was saying not to rush to war and was labeled anti-war until the IWR vote became a litmus test mid 2003 - largely by the Dean campaign. Kerry's history and his comments made me comfortable that he was absolutely not a hawk. Having protested in DC and NYC with three preteen and teen daughters, I would not have supported him in the primary if I would have thought that he was a hawk.
Though a strong moral argument against the war could have worked in the Primary, the country was definitely not ready for that. In fact, Kerry DID state a strong moral argument - though many missed it. Every day, in his standard speech he said that Bush mislead us into war by not exhausting the diplomacy as he promised - thus it was not a war of last resort. I know people who that greatly angered because it meant that the war the US was fighting was not a just war. (My Catholic mom, a wing voter, was absolutely furious because of that.) She voted for Obama in 2008. In his case, he was not giving a moral case, but said it was "a dumb war" and that it was a blunder.
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