So some on the left actually believe this how they win?

I have noticed a lot of self congratulations from the left over recent events. They seem to see the delay of the Trump cabinet picks, protests, celebrity rants, violent reactions, and the latest court attempts to block Trump's refugee and travel ban as signs that they are in fact now "winning" what they otherwise lost over the past several elections.

To be clear, Trump has opened with a flurry of executive orders and other bold acts, many pushing the conventional limits, some going well beyond those same limits. To be equally clear, Trump has pulled back on some of these actions, especially those that did go beyond conventional limits. But what he has pulled back on has been limited, and on the broader scale it certainly appears that a great deal of what he probably hoped to accomplish in this initial push, is already done.

In politics, like in business, you don't always get everything you ultimately pine for. You just hope you accomplish more than you don't. This means pushing into the areas of what you might wishfully desire, with the strategy that the compromise will give you what you actually need. The art of the deal. Read the book.

Ultimately Trump's cabinet will be confirmed. A year from now, nobody will remember that it took three weeks, rather than three days to get them confirmed. To the degree that the Democrats caused a delay, it will be rightfully seen by most as more obstruction than resistance. Does anyone really even remember the confirmation of Obama's cabinet? Do we even remember who the Education Secretary even was? Probably not.

Ultimately the protests will slow down, if not come to a complete halt. The left went from bragging about hundreds of thousands protesting after the inauguration, to bragging about a thousand who protested a couple weeks later at the Super Bowl. The much anticipated Lady Gaga anti-Trump rhetoric boiled down to some between the lines moments such as mashing This Land is my Land with God bless America under the guise of being patriotic. Of course most people probably didn't even realize the Woodie Guthrie folk song was actually written as a protest anthem. They probably thought she was actually being patriotic.

Lastly, the court cases over the refugee and travel ban is a lose lose for the left. If they lose the case in court, then it looks like the left was attempting to overstep it's opposition to Trump by misusing the courts. But even if the left prevails in court, then it will be seen by Trump supporters (and plenty of others) that their popular will is being taken away by a misuse of the courts. It will certainly work to reinforce the Trump demand that our Country has lost it's way, that politically correctness is still more important than national security, and that we need to reign in a court system that has become almost tyrannical in it's scope. Not to mention, he can play the martyr, by telling people that he is the first President in history to have such a travel ban declared unconstitutional, even though Reagan, Obama  and every President in between has used them without challenge.

Ultimately Politics is always about the next election. In the 2014 midterms, the GOP has a higher percentage of the vote total than Democrats did. There is little reason to believe that 2018 will be much different, especially given the way that the Democrats are working to "obstruct" those who were actually elected to run things. When the Democrats are defending twenty five Senate seats, ten of which are in red states that Trump won, I don't see how driving a larger partisan wedge between the two Parties is going to help them.