Opinion: The next Democratic president could face a legitimacy crisis
By Paul Waldman Paul Waldman Opinion writer covering politics Email Bio Follow Opinion writer May 6 at 2:36 PM Some Democrats have begun to worry that if President Trump loses reelection next year, he might refuse to give up power. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned in an interview published over the weekend that the Democrat will need a landslide victory to keep Trump from refusing to leave office.
It’s that the next Democratic president could face an opposition party that acts as though the president has no legitimacy whatsoever. And I fear that Democrats, with their focus on Trump, are not taking this threat seriously enough. Someone might remind Biden that in 2009, when he was vice president, Republicans decided to oppose President Barack Obama on anything and everything he wanted to do. Someone might also remind Biden of that time when Mitch McConnell simply refused to have the Senate even consider the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, by making up a new “rule” that presidents don’t get to nominate justices in the last year of their terms.
If your answer to that question is that Republicans would never go that far, you haven’t been living on this planet for the past decade or two. That’s who they were before Trump was elected. But even if Trump does lose reelection, the GOP is likely to continue with this — and make it a lot worse.
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