Whatever the outcome, it will not be a desirable one.

Concerning yesterday’s debate among Democrats vying to serve as New York City’s next mayor, Dominic Pino made a pithy and clever observation: “If New York City was a foreign country that the U.S. believed to be strategically important during the Cold War, the CIA would be backing Andrew Cuomo right now,” he wrote, “and I’d probably say it was a good thing.”

I could not allow this bit of wisdom to wash away forgotten along with the tide of incoming internal Slack channel banter, and it is reproduced here with Dominic’s permission. I like this metaphor for a variety of reasons — the foremost being that it helps me come to terms with the terrible intellectual, moral, and political compromises New York City voters will soon have to make. There are no good actors here, only less bad ones.

You can pick your own analogy, but I’m going with the Angolan Civil War. The cast of primary characters in this drama fit neatly within that rubric.

For example:

Eric Adams as the FNLA: Like the National Front for the Liberation of Angola, Adams rose to prominence amid high hopes that he would restore sanity and prudence to city governance. As an opponent of Bill de Blasio’s record, he was as stridently anti-communist as the FNLA. In relatively short order, though, both Adams and the National Front proved to be corrupt and incompetent, and they fell out of favor with their constituents. We would need a new, more capable proxy.

Zohran Mamdani as MPLA: Whoever we backed in Angola, it wasn’t going to be the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola. That group, which had real numbers and popular support — especially in the country’s populous southern regions — was a Soviet cutout. Yet, much like the Soviet Union by 1975, the progressive movement is fighting on many fronts, and Zohran Mamdani’s candidacy had been a tertiary concern until recently. He is superficially formidable, but his recent successes mask resource deficiencies and obscure the degree to which local stakeholders vehemently oppose his ascension to power.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as Cuba: Quite unlike the Soviets, Cuba’s communist regime was deeply invested in the MPLA’s success. And it had far more to prove. Without Moscow’s cooperation — indeed, despite the Kremlin’s skepticism toward the whole enterprise — Havana took a leading role in standing up that Marxist insurgency, but only after it became clear that Moscow was wedded to its wait-and-see approach. Indeed, it wasn’t so much the MPLA’s success as the Cuban example that eventually compelled the Soviets to overinvest in the Angolan conflict against their better judgment.

Andrew Cuomo as Jonas Savimbi: Cuomo, like Savimbi and his UNITA faction, is hardly the ideal American ally. He eagerly associated with communist elements before he underwent a radical ideological makeover — one conspicuously timed for maximum political advantage. Savimbi was as charismatic and ambitious as he was ruthless. Given the FNLA’s shortcomings, he and his scrappy faction soon became the CIA’s preferred recipient of American support. It was, at best, a marriage of convenience.

This extended analogy breaks down if you attempt to incorporate Zaire’s and South Africa’s intervention in the conflict, the U.S. Congress’s decision to cut off support for anti-communist elements in Angola, and the subsequent decades-long struggle for power between Savimbi and Angola’s Marxist elements. Indeed, the country’s civil war only decisively concluded after Savimbi’s 2002 assassination, at which point the country’s armed factions evolved into political parties. The MPLA remains in power in Luanda to this day.

The metaphor’s challenges notwithstanding, it might mirror the outcome of the contest that’s unfolding in New York City. If he can unite the anti-Cuomo coalition, the city’s ranked-choice voting system gives Mamdani a puncher’s chance at winning the Democratic nomination and, invariably, the city itself. Whatever the outcome of this race, it will not be a desirable one.