"Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle” - (The game is not worth the candle).
Randle Cotgrave - Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611)
The French word Jeu means a ‘hand of cards’ here . The sense is quite simple. You are playing with a hand so weak, you won’t even recoup the farthings you paid for the candles to light the gaming table.
As of this morning Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination for the SCOTUS is in this ’no-win’ scenario, after multiple new female accusers began to come forward with fresh allegations of sexual misconduct against him.
One ugly aspect of this scenario is that senior GOP Judiciary committee members like Chuck Grassley, Orinn Hatch and Lindsey Graham were apparently aware that these new allegations were coming down the road at them, and they frantically tried to force Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings through Congress last week, before the public became aware of them too.
All that changes now. A 53 year old woman called Deborah Ramirez has come forward to allege that Brett Kavanaugh sexually exposed himself to her at a drunken dormitory party in Yale university in the Freshman year 1983-4.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/senate-democrats-investigate-a-new-allegation-of-sexual-misconduct-from-the-supreme-court-nominee-brett-kavanaughs-college-years-deborah-ramirez
Meanwhile the attorney Michael Avenatti says he is representing multiple new sources who claim Brett Kavanaugh and his prep-school friend Mark Judge were responsible for a string of gang rapes against young women whom they targeted with drink and drugs and then subsequently assaulted.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/23/second-woman-assault-kavanaugh-837678
Brett Kavanaugh is denying all the newest claims, but his nomination is now in dire peril. His wisest course of action at this point would be to fold his SCOTUS nomination immediately, and hope that the FBI don’t start a formal investigation of the latest claims.