I’VE SAID BEFORE that I think it was a mistake for Kerry to brand himself as “The Vietnam Candidate.” But this column by Colbert King explains why it’s playing so badly:

Those who dismiss critics of John Kerry’s Vietnam service as just a bunch of right-wing Republicans out to advance George W. Bush’s cause don’t know what they are talking about — or they are engaged in wishful thinking. . . . The column also criticized “Unfit for Command” for smearing Kerry, a decorated former naval officer, as disloyal because of his antiwar activities. Writing as a former Army officer, I concluded: “Speaking for myself, it is enough that he served.”

A number of readers agreed with that conclusion. Many more, however, most of them angry veterans, did not. Most striking was the fact that those who identified themselves seemed to span the political spectrum, with one even describing himself as a Howard Dean Democrat.

Two weeks later, another e-mail arrived on the same topic. It was from a Howard University classmate, a friend of 47 years, former assistant secretary of the Air Force Rodney Coleman. A Democrat. . . .

“When Kerry made those critical statements of the war,” Coleman wrote, “my parents, God bless them, went ballistic about their son going in harm’s way. My military colleagues in the fellows program who had been there and were shot up were incensed that a so-called military man would engage in such insubordinate actions. At the time Kerry made those unfortunate remarks, America had POWs and MIAs, among them my friend, Colonel Fred Cherry, the longest-held black POW of the Vietnam War. How could a true American fighting man throw away his medals, while thousands he fought alongside of were in the midst of another example of man’s inhumanity to man?”

Read the whole thing.