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In Woody Allen's iconic film "Annie Hall," protagonist Alvy Singer instructs his new girlfriend that our existence is divided into two categories: the horrible and, if you're really lucky, the miserable. For many Democrats who find Donald Trump and his presidency an abomination, their alternative seems a Democratic Party dominated by a base whose views range from insipid to deplorable.

New York City Democratic primary voters' choice of 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani as the Democratic nominee for mayor punctuates the point, but the point has already been years in the punctuating. Mamdani, the highly privileged (elite university, elite and well-heeled parents), proudly proclaims himself a socialist. Interestingly, the self-proclaimed avatar of the proletariat was rejected overwhelmingly in last week's primary by working-class voters while mopping up among wealthy New Yorkers. And the guy who had launched his political career by accusing the New York Police Department of being "racist" and demanding on the record that it be "defunded" (lately denying that he'd said it, naturally) was trounced among New York's Black voters.

Worth contemplating.

But hey! His use of social media was so cool, so creative, so electric! His past career as a rapper was so neat! And most importantly of all, he is so ... young!

And, let's face it, he proclaims the stuff that, increasingly, younger Democrats like hearing. Such as blaming the Oct. 7, 2023, mass slaughter of Israelis by over 5,000 jihadist gunmen who invaded Israeli villages in order to massacre as many Jews as possible ... on Israel.

What could be more obvious than that Oct. 7 was Israel's fault?

So good on Mamdani for being a progressive truth teller when, on Oct. 8, when Israelis were still trying to collect the body fragments of the men, women, toddlers and infants whom Hamas had mutilated, burned alive, dismembered and raped, he issued a statement blaming the slaughter of Israelis on Israel.

Give it to Mamdani: This view may be depraved, but it is a depravity that sells to plenty of young people educated on TikTok, and his successful campaign was built by and on those who are fully on board. Here was one prominent pro-Mamdani social media influencer on primary night: "Tonight we celebrate. Tomorrow we get the lists from Zohran and the round-up begins." And another: "Consider the intifada globalized." Here was the Mamdani campaign videographer: "The fascist state of Israel will fall in our lifetimes."

Mamdani World's inanity was hardly limited to the subject of Jews. Here was the Mamdani campaign's political director getting down with Luigi Mangione, the apparent cold-blooded executioner of a health care executive in Manhattan last year: "(Mangione) is adored not only because he dared to target a leader of one of the most vile, self-enriching industries darkening our society today but because he dared to defy the stasis of nihilistic rejection."

Because murder can be progressive, you see. And it's the murder victims who are the nihilists, not the murderers.

The truth is, however, that Mamdani's decisive win is also substantially attributable to factors other than the increased proclivity of Democratic primary voters to embrace moral idiocy. He defeated Andrew Cuomo, who conducted himself more like an emperor than someone who needed to actually win votes, barely deigning to interact with voters. In contrast to Mamdani's energized personal exuberance, Cuomo showed up virtually nowhere. When he did, he glowered. The only thing Cuomo exuded was arrogance, the more remarkable given that he was saddled with questions about past sexual harassment, even if many of those questions were themselves questionable.

Then there was the Trump effect or, more precisely, the anti-Trump effect. For plentiful good reason, the 47th president has revolted Democrats, in more ways than one. They are understandably looking for ways to express their outrage, and voting for the more expressive, more aggressive of the top two Democratic mayoral candidates was a way to be counted.

But we should be honest. The meaning of Zohran Mamdani's victory is that the Democratic Party has increasingly absorbed and validated extreme left-wing blather, including views about the right of Jews to live securely in Israel and in America that are historically shameful. That leaves many Americans, especially Democrats, with no satisfactory place to turn.

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Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.

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