We should stop thinking of Alvin Bragg as a law-enforcement official.

Manhattan’s district attorney is an elected progressive Democrat who campaigned on putting the powers of his office in the service of partisan politics — explicitly vowing to exploit them against former President Donald Trump, his party’s archnemesis.

This itself is a shocking development, especially for those of us who both grew up in New York City and had careers in law enforcement.

For 34 years, before his 2009 retirement, the late, legendary lawman Robert Morgenthau led Bragg’s office.

Until about a decade ago, it was only of marginal concern that the DA’s job was an elective position — unlike in the federal system, where prosecutors are appointed by the president based on their legal and ethical qualifications, then vetted by the Senate to ensure (we hope) they will not abuse their powers for partisan advantage.

In Democrat-run one-party cities, DAs have long been chosen more by party leaders’ control over the nomination process than by voters’ choice — effectively, a rubber stamp — at the ballot box.

Still, even a decade ago, it was assumed the DA should be a strong law-enforcement leader who would uphold the rule of law without fear or favor.

The Bolshevik left has put an end to all that.

Progressive funding networks backed by George Soros and others realized that for a comparatively small investment, they could get their candidates elected in what typically had been modest five-figure, noncompetitive campaigns. The radicals have done just this, in Manhattan, most of the five boroughs, and big cities across the country.

As we’re seeing, prosecutors have real power.

No matter what the police do, no matter what the courts say, it is prosecutors who decide what laws get enforced and what laws don’t, which criminals are prosecuted, and which citizens are treated as if they were criminals.

The progressive base is not vast, but — alarmingly — it is more robust and audacious than it used to be.

Progressives wield strong influence over institutions of opinion and young, college-educated Americans. As a social force, they punch way above their weight.

In that sense, they are reminiscent of the original Bolsheviks, who claimed the loyalty of fewer than 10% of Russians at the time their revolution launched a seven-decade reign of Soviet terror.

For present purposes, we need to grasp that today’s apparatchiks do not regard the justice system as the foundation of our cherished rule of law.

To the contrary, their two-fold objective with the legal system is (1) to dismantle it as the undergirding of what progressives regard as a racist, exploitative society and (2) to control it as a punitive weapon against political enemies.

Is the case Bragg is bringing against Trump trivial? Is it legally weak? Could it undermine the public perception of stronger cases against Trump being built by prosecutors at the Justice Department and in Georgia?

Sure. All those things are true.

Nevertheless, if that’s your focus, you’re missing the point.

It’s not that today’s Bolshevik leftists do not want Trump convicted. Of course, they do.

But more than that, they want him persecuted and his followers vicariously menaced.

They want him put through a prohibitively expensive, emotionally wrenching, psychologically exhausting, and publicly humiliating spectacle.

They want to make not so much the outcome but the process of the criminal justice system a burden so unbearable that their political enemies become too cowed to resist their advance.

Remember the atrocious Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, when the Bolshevik left smeared and endeavored to destroy a decent man for the grave sin of being a conservative constitutionalist?

When it obstructed the proceedings with wild ravings in the chamber and stormed the building — all without any of the high media-Democrat dudgeon that followed the Jan. 6 riot?

The New York City Trump prosecution is the criminal-justice system version of the Kavanaugh Senate confirmation, except twice as ferocious.

Convicting Donald Trump is secondary. For today’s Bolshevik left, the objective is to make the process the penalty.

Andrew C. McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor.