They’re making the same mistake they did during the election. Committing too much of their forces too early instead of picking their fights and keeping their powder dry for the right time.

In two weeks we’ve already seen endless protests, riots against free speech, and now political power plays from the judiciary. What unplayed cards will they still have up their sleeves in two months?

They can have media outrage over everything President Trump does or says. They can try to hold up his confirmation hearings for his cabinet just ’cause. They can have judges declare it’s unconstitutional for him to tie his own shoelaces. They can never “normalize” him or examine the possibility that he’s anything other than Hitler or the devil incarnate.

The thing about effective use of power though is it needs to used like a tool, with precision and in the pursuit of decisive objectives.

Using a frantic scattershot approach is bound to lose. Try winning at chess or go behaving like that!

If the opposition had chosen key times and places to block Trump spaced out over the next couple of years, they may have succeeded in sapping his momentum and the popular support he requires to stay in power when both parties hate his guts. This indiscriminate shitshow though will backfire. A hundred million Americans are watching this happen with shock and the quick succession of events is keeping their attention.

If the judiciary shows it is just another political body without any sense of impartiality or fair play then it loses its legitimacy. Even if they succeeded in stopping Trump cold from now on, no one would take them seriously anymore as keepers of the law.

This corrosion would leave them vulnerable to a new wave of demagogues that would have them begging for the good old days of a center-right moderate like Trump.

Their total inability to keep the long game in mind or even to approach issues right in front of them with a coherent strategy reminds us why they are falling from power in the first place. Their ineptitude is great enough, if Trump doesn’t clear them out, someone else far worse for them will.

Today, there will be a hearing in the 9th circuit court over a judge’s ruling that prohibits Trump to mandate the exercise of his most basic constitutional duties. We are about to see how far they want to escalate this right now and whether they have any basic common sense. If this goes to the Supreme Court we are entering Dredd Scott decision territory. It wouldn’t be the first time the courts have been openly co-opted as a political weapon and once that is done, the rule of law itself is undermined.

Update 2/9/17: They really did it. They ruled against the ban and this escalates further…