At about 11 p.m. on Sunday The New York Times did something extraordinary: It quietly published a tiny “editor’s note” - an addendum, or a correction, really - to what had been characterized earlier in the day as a blockbuster story about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

In that story — an excerpt from an about-to-be-published book by two NYT reporters - the newspaper resurrected old charges of alleged sexual misconduct dating back to when the 54-year-old justice was in college and claimed there was another drunken episode from Kavanaugh’s undergraduate days at Yale.

This tale was essentially a reheated version of the scurrilous story that was trotted out in September 2018 in an attempt to sink Kavanaugh’s nomination on the eve of his confirmation to the Supreme Court. This accusation, brought by one of Bill Clinton’s former lawyers who was at Yale at the same time as Kavanaugh, claimed that during an alcohol-soaked dorm party in the 1980s friends grabbed the future justice’s genitals and pushed them into the hand of a coed.

What the NYT forgot to tell readers, and added hours after publishing this flimsy story online, was that the alleged “victim” in the incident had “declined to be interviewed” and that her “friends say that she does not recall the incident.”

The reporters who wrote the book claim the disclaimer was in their original story, but a Times editor deleted it.

I wonder why?

Oh, it’s worth noting that The Washington Post passed altogether on the uncorroborated story.

Pause for moment and ask yourselves why the Times not only published what is essentially a glorified rumor and then deliberately excised a critical chunk of exculpatory information.

Better yet, ask why lefties and their pals at the Times are going after Kavanaugh now.

Look, we all know why Democrats and their enablers in the mainstream media eagerly embraced the cockamamie story from Christine Blasey Ford last fall. They were bitter about the Senate’s failure to confirm Obama nominee Merrick Garland to the court.

That was hardball politics at work. Democrats were angry after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings on the Merrick nomination as he gambled on a Republican winning the presidency in 2016.

Yet members of the GOP did not besmirch the character or integrity of Garland.

Garland wasn’t elevated to the highest court. He was the victim of political gamesmanship, but his reputation was intact.

Enraged sore losers on the left, however, are determined to savage Kavanaugh. To destroy his reputation, humiliate and crush him by accusing the justice of loathsome behavior based on marinated memories of a couple of partisans.

Blasey Ford was a Bernie supporter and an abortion enthusiast. The latest accuser, lawyer Max Stier, who claims to know about the genital jiggling, was one Bill Clinton’s defense lawyers during the Lewinsky scandal.

No sooner had the Times’ story broken than left-wing lemmings began bleating for Kavanaugh’s impeachment. Kamala Harris was quick to call the Supreme Court justice a liar and launched an impeachment petition. Elizabeth Warren clambered on the impeachment bandwagon as did Amy Klobuchar.

Far be it from me to offer advice to liberals, but I will say this: Anyone who believes that taking a second run at Brett Kavanaugh is a winning 2020 strategy is delusional.

I hesitate to point this out, because it may sound as if I believe this latest story - and I don’t - but if an incident happened the way it’s been described, it was Kavanaugh who was sexually assaulted. After all, his were the genitals that were allegedly grabbed.

Nothing in recent years united conservatives more than last year’s vicious, fictitious, foaming-at-the-mouth, mean-spirited attacks on Kavanaugh. He was a judge who enjoyed a spotless judicial record until Dianne Feinstein and her minions went after him with half-baked uncorroborated memories from an unreliable witness.

Reminding the electorate of the vindictiveness of desperate Democrats may be the very best way to re-elect the president.

But, hey, don’t listen to me. Go for it.