What's the best way to delegitimize Donald Trump's inauguration?  Play the Nixon card early and often.

Mentioning Richard Nixon in the same sentence as Donald Trump has been much in evidence this week, as the media tries to attack Trump by connecting him to the disgraced president.

To wit:

1. NPR notices that Trump's music picks are a lot like Nixon's.  (So of course, Trump is exactly like Nixon, right?)

2. Time Magazine points out that the inauguration boycotts are just like boycots for you know who.

3. The L.A. Times says the best comparison to another president's inaugural address is (wait for it)...Nixon!

4. The Daily Beast answers the question, "Why Trump's Inaugural May Look a Lot Like Nixon's."

There were plenty of Trump-Nixon comparisons during the campaign and immediately after the election.  So why the left's preoccupation with a president who served 40 years ago?

Bringing down Richard Nixon was the high point of post-World War II liberalism.  The effort united the media, congressional Democrats, and mainstream and far-left liberal groups in a way that had not been duplicated before and has not been since.

It's not been for lack of trying.  During the Iran contra scandal, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee was absolutely gleeful, believing he could relive the glory of the Nixon days and bring down Ronald Reagan, too.  The whole "Bush lied, people died" movement," led by Michigan Rep. John Conyers, sought to impeach George Bush for going to war in Iraq under false pretenses.  (They also tried to bring Bush and some of his advisers up on war crimes.)

That the left failed to coalesce in an effort to remove these Republiucan presidents was largely because there are a helluva lot fewer leftists than there were in the early 1970s, and they simply don't wield the power they did back then.

But ginning up hysteria over Trump's ascension to the White House has been a lot easier by invoking the dark imagery from the Nixon administration and the prospect that Trump will act unconstitutionally.  Of course, the left didn't mind when Obama issued extra-constitutional executive orders, but this is a Republican in office now, which makes a big difference – at least to them.

This deliberate attempt to undermine the new president by comparing him to a president who was accused of criminal acts won't achieve its goal of putting the image in people's minds of Trump and Nixon being equally bad.  Most voters today weren't even born when Nixon was president, and even more don't know what he might have done wrong.

But reliving those heady days when the left brought down a president is too tempting to pass up.