#The Kennedy dynasty may be well and truly over

Finally.

When Joe Kennedy III, the undistinguished 39-year-old four-term Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, announced he would challenge longtime incumbent Ed Markey for U.S. Senate last September, the liberal media had its typical slobbering, Pavlovian response.

Still does, despite a dramatic drop in the polls.

“The Democratic representative hasn’t come up with a good rationale for challenging progressive Senator Ed Markey in Massachusetts,” The Atlantic said three weeks ago. “But with a name like his, it may not matter.”

Really? Great-Uncle Ted’s run for president in 1980 couldn’t be derailed by serial drunkenness, womanizing, cheating, nor lying — not even Chappaquiddick and the little matter of leaving a young woman to drown was enough.

It was Ted’s televised inability to answer that very question — “Why are you running?” — that did him in.

Voters aren’t stupid. They know the reason. The Kennedys think Massachusetts is their fiefdom, the Oval Office their birthright.

Kennedys run because they are Kennedys.

Increasingly, thankfully, that tautology no longer holds. We all know Camelot was an epic lie. JFK’s father bought him the presidency. RFK, who at least cared about Civil Rights and the plight of American’s poor, was the family’s only real leading light. Ted maintained his Senate seat out of generational sorrow and nostalgia, but had he lived to see the #MeToo era he would never have survived.

The Kennedys have been on a decades-long decline, their last name a chimera disguising waning power and intra-party disregard.

Who can forget the ne plus ultra of modern Kennedy entitlement: Caroline’s demand, in 2008, that then-New York governor David Paterson appoint her as successor to Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat? Caroline was so sure of a cakewalk that she couldn’t even bother to fake humility or a glancing familiarity with the issues.

Instead, her campaign was felled by the family’s bête noire: The speechless response when a reporter dares ask: “Why you?”

She had no idea.

“In interviews over the weekend,” the AP reported back then, Caroline “offered explanations for running that included the 9/11 attacks on Manhattan” plus “Obama’s encouragement and the commitment to public service by her father, President John F. Kennedy, and others in her family.”

Caroline’s “um . . . like . . . you know” interviews are the stuff of legendary political bumbling. Even the New York Times couldn’t back her. Paterson threw her under the bus.

Not “ready for prime time,” his team told CNN. “She clearly has no policy experience and couldn’t handle the pressure.”

If Camelot’s princess can’t get handed a Senate seat, what makes these beta-Kennedys think they can?

Joe Kennedy’s polling has been in freefall. Two new polls show the 74-year-old Markey opening up a 10-12-point lead — and Markey is polling strongest among the young and college-educated, for whom the Kennedys possess no charm nor nostalgia.

The best reason Joe has for running? He’s in “the fight of my generation.”

Joe has yet to get the memo: His generation doesn’t want him. Just like they didn’t want his great pal Beto O’Rourke, the two of them road tripping with a besotted national media while debating who looked and sounded more Kennedyesque.

The Dems, however, are no longer in thrall. Now we have AOC cutting a campaign ad for Markey, her co-author on the Green New Deal. “When it comes to progressive leadership,” she says, “it’s not your age that counts, it’s the age of your ideas.”

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren supports Markey. So do party leaders Chuck Schumer, Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney. The Boston Globe endorsed Markey. Among Massachusetts Irish Catholic politicos, that’s like opening the New Testament to find a disclaimer reading: “Not based on actual events.”

Joe Kennedy “lacks the chops and track record that Markey would bring,” said the Globe.

Yet Nancy Pelosi recently endorsed Joe Kennedy because, you guessed it, he’s a Kennedy.

“I wasn’t too happy with some of the assault that I saw made on the Kennedy family,” Pelosi said. Also, “Joe Kennedy represents this party’s future. He will help lead Democrats forward on the defining battles of our time.”

How could anyone argue with such a specific rationale?

Meanwhile, Markey is looking to deliver the knockout punch to this flailing, fraudulent dynasty.

“We asked what we could do for our country,” says Markey, citing JFK’s inaugural words. “We went out, we did it. With all due respect, it’s time to start asking what your country can do for you.”