1. It’s Wednesday, February 1, 2017.

Just being able to write “February” feels a little better.

2. January, as awful as it was, will be the best month of 2017, according to sportswriter Jesse Spector.

Why?

Because Trump wasn’t president in 19 days of it.

Which means February is the second best month of the year, since it only has 28 days of Trump.

3. There appears to be some confusion among Democrats about how to deal with this Supreme Court pick.

Some Democrats believe they shouldn’t go to the mat to stop Neil Gorsuch. This seat on the bench is the one that was occupied by Antonin Scalia, so from that standpoint, it’s a wash ideologically.

The thinking goes that the next seat – the one vacated by one of the four remaining liberal-moderate justices – is the one that requires a full-scale donnybrook.

Wrong.

This notion that Democrats have to hold their fire is what has Democrats in trouble.

The right doesn’t seem to believe in holding its fire. It goes after everyone every time.

That’s why we don’t have Associate Justice Merrick Garland. That’s why Cassandra Butts isn’t the late ambassador to the Bahamas, since she died while an ignoramus senator from Arkansas stalled her nomination because he hated President Obama.

Republicans don’t seem to leave seats uncontested, and they play at every level – local, state and federal.

Democrats have to do that too. Stop thinking that you’re going to spend yourself in a fight. Think, instead, of the fight – win or lose – as fuel for the next one. Keep fighting.

That is what the people who vote for Democrats expect this time. They are angry, embarrassed and sad, and right now there’s nothing short of God or whatever supernatural force atheists believe in reaching from the sky and smiting Trump and the rest of them that’s going to assuage their emotions.

Any Democrat who votes for Gorsuch gets a big X next to their name from other Democrats. That is the reality 12 days into the Dark Ages.