It’s time to put to bed the debate over whether it was intention or incompetence that forced Joe Biden’s convention speech into a slot well past prime time.

All the evidence points to intent.

Organizers scheduled too many speakers and knew what they were going to say because it was all loaded on to TelePrompters.

No matter their lame defenses Tuesday, they had to assume there would be time spent on applause and transitions, so Biden’s finishing well after midnight on the East Coast could not be a surprise to them.

Then again, who can fault the organizers for wanting to hide him?

Biden is well past his prime, as he demonstrated repeatedly with his angry shouting and repetitive asides of “I’m not joking” and “That’s not hyperbole.”

Little-watched late show

Put it this way: If it was your job to convince America the party can be trusted to find a new leader who is ready to guide the nation for four more years, would you want Biden’s dreary performance to be seen by as many as 40 millions voters?

Even worse, would you want to take a chance that the same Joe who delivered the June debate debacle would show up and destroy the fiction that he and the party are even modestly competent and honest?

You’d be crazy not to fear that his stumbles, mumbles and brain freezes would remind the nation that Dems put a dangerously declining figure in the White House and tried to hide him from the public.

And remember — Biden would be accepting his party’s renomination this week instead of saying goodbye had he put on even a halfway decent debate performance against Donald Trump.

So it’s clear — the star of the “Thank You Joe Biden” evening was purposely put out to pasture in the wee hours precisely because most people would be asleep before he finished.

Seen that way, the scam reveals a larger point, namely that the Chicago convention is running as fast as it can because the party’s hopes for November are built on Three Big Lies.

It needs to open and close the show before voters see what’s really behind the curtain.

Lie No. 1 is the claim that Biden is still compos mentis enough to remain in the Oval Office for five more months.

He’s running out the clock with extended stays at his beach house, an open invitation for our adversaries to make trouble.

One outrageous example came Monday when, among other distortions, he said the anti-Israel protesters in the streets of Chi­cago “have a point.”

No, they don’t have a legitimate point because Israel has every right to finish off the terror organizations that carried out the bloodiest single-day attack in the Jewish state’s history.

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Follow along with The Post’s live reporting of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

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For Biden to say otherwise encourages the protesters, lets Iran off the hook and gives Hamas no reason to agree to a cease-fire deal that is already lopsided in its favor.

Heckuva job, Joe.

Lie No. 2 of the convention is that Biden has been a great president whose tenure is splashed with historic accomplishments.

Oh, please.

It’s not a plausible assessment to see him as successful by any definition.

If he was great or even good, why did the public so thoroughly reject his policies?

Why do 65% of voters say the country is on the wrong track?

And don’t forget his family’s foreign influence-peddling schemes, which add to the odor.

His poor ranking is not a recent phenomenon.

Biden’s top approval rating came early in his term, at 57%, and his lowest, 36%, came last month, according to Gallup.

In other words, he was taking on water long before the debate debacle, and was sinking beyond the point of salvation immediately ­afterward.

As I wrote on the night of the June 27 debate, he was toast and would be gone from the race within a month, and he was.

Polls and donor fury made it no longer possible for even dead-enders to believe that Hidin’ Biden could continue through the election.

Duo’s policy disasters

Which brings us to Lie No. 3: Kamala Harris is competent enough to replace him as president.

If that’s true, she did an excellent job of hiding her talent for the last 3 ½ years.

Beyond the word salads, odd giggles and the exits of a dozen aides, complete with horror stories of her brutal management style and refusal to prepare for public appearances, she was part of every major administration ­decision and policy.

Meaning all those failures are her burden, too.

Yet here she is, heir to a fortune in party delegates handed her by a process that would make the old bosses of Tammany Hall blush.

She is so unprepared for the promotion that the game of Hidin’ Biden is being replaced by Hidin’ Harris.

Imagine a major party nominee refusing to hold a single press conference or even sit for a serious interview.

There is no precedent in modern times, but neither she nor her aides even bother to concoct lies about why.

They know she would be exposed if the big media outlets even pretended to do their jobs.

Instead, the Washington press corps are happy to let her skate by because they share her objective: keep Trump out of the White House.

To that end, it was shameless the way Biden, Hillary Clinton and other convention speakers hailed the fact that Trump had been indicted in four cases and convicted in one.

It’s a fact — but only because Democrats weaponized law enforcement and much of the judicial system, especially in New York, to carry out political aims.

Each of the cases is infected by politics, yet party leaders celebrate them as if they are legitimate.

‘Unlocking’ dirty trick

The delegates who chanted “Lock him up” several times Monday removed any doubt the whole thing was a political dirty trick.

As did Clinton, who smirked and nodded her head in approval as the chants grew during her ­remarks.

The fact that she of the Bleachbit and Steele-dossier infamy skates free while Trump faces a ton of criminal charges should be a national scandal.

Although the unprecedented rigging of the game is clear, it can be no consolation to Trump.

He was on his way to a likely landslide over Biden and now faces a new opponent who has energized Dems simply because she is younger, fresher and nonwhite.

On the other hand, she’s also far more radical, as her loopy economic plan shows, and her appeal to the far left includes her choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as a running mate.

He was a bad choice and it was made for the wrong reason — to avoid having to pick Pennsylvania’s Jewish governor, Josh Shapiro.

That would have inflamed the antisemitic mobs Harris is shamefully trying to court.

So far, she hasn’t paid a price among sensible voters for any of her missteps.

One of Trump’s biggest challenges is to make sure she does.