“That will not stop the Progressives from trying”
Walk into any college classroom and continue walking into any office infested with fat federal bureaucrats, then get back to us on whether or not you’d be comfortable going onto a hostile battlefield with those people.
I look forward to your answer.
I won't be comfortable going into battle against "those people" or any people. If things go hot, everyone will suffer badly.
The Progressives will overestimate their abilities and underestimate those of their opponents.
Their opponents should not make the same mistake.
Government edicts will be enforced initially by adequately trained and well armed fighters whose commanders will be selected for willingness to obey executive orders without question.
The fighters will not be "fat cat bureaucrats" and naive college students. They will be regular military and armed civilian agents - supplemented by union thugs and irregular civilian militias who are pro-Government (think NBBP and "Sons of La Raza").
Progressive enforcement groups will often be poorly deployed and tend to overreact to real and false alarms. Dissidents will be quickly purged from the ranks and from command, but morale will be a growing problem with every deployment. Competence will decline sharply (for the Progressive forces) as the "Security Witch-hunts" decimate certain organizations.
A critical weakness of the Progressives is that they simply will never have enough fighters to secure themselves against a hostile population. And everything on their agenda is guarenteed to rachet that hostility upwards in various segments of the population.
Fundamentally, there is not enough loot to go around to all of the supporters. Somebody will get badly shorted on promised goodies and they will become uncontrollable in their resentment.
Also - there will be diversion, sabotage, or simple incompetence in distribution of loot. Imagine the consequences when the EBT system fails, for example.
Unanswered riots, desertions, mutiny, and "Blue-on-Blue" fratricide will be the clear sign announcing that the Progressives have lost. However, it is a long ugly trip to get to that point, and it would still not be the finish.
There are too many vulnerable points which cannot be defended if the cycle of reprisals begins. The short story by Thomas Bracken ("What I saw at the Coup") describes one all-too-plausible scenario.
I think it is a bit optimisic.