WASHINGTON — The last-minute jockeying by lawmakers and other political stakeholders played right into the reality show-like gamesmanship surrounding President Trump’s choice for Supreme Court nominee — right down to a blast from the past re-emerging on Trump’s list of finalists.

Trump’s short list continued to vacillate in the hours leading up to tonight’s prime-time finale, where his choice to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy will be revealed. But the contestants in this game show aren’t the potential nominees, who have already been carefully vetted by conservative legal groups the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society.

The real players are folks like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose late-hour political jockeying upended the notion that the high court spot was D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s to lose.

Last week I was told Trump had essentially narrowed the list down to two: Kavanaugh and 6th Circuit Judge Raymond Kethledge.

And then there were four.

“The four people — they’re excellent, every one,” Trump told reporters yesterday en route to the White House from his Bedminster, N.J., estate, where playmaking by lawmakers, conservative advocates and others reached a fever pitch over the weekend.

The conservatives urged Trump to keep an open mind on Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the 7th Circuit, whose confirmation hearing tete-a-tete with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) made Barrett a religious-rights cult hero.

Then McConnell and other Republicans reminded Trump of another political goal: the confirmation path of least resistance.

With only a one-senator majority, McConnell wants to leave nothing to chance, after GOP Sen. Rand Paul raised alarm bells about Kavanaugh and Maine Sen. Susan Collins said she wouldn’t support a nominee hostile to the court’s precedent in Roe v. Wade — and the conservative Barrett has expressed a willingness to reverse precedent she sees as wrongly decided.

And with that, Thomas Hardiman — the judge who Trump passed over last year to install Neil Gorsuch to the seat once held by the late Justice Antonin Scalia last year — was back in play.

Hardiman has a tale Republicans like McConnell love: a former taxi driver from the key swing state of Pennsylvania who comes with the recommendation of fellow 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Maryanne Trump Barry — the president’s sister.

Trump was reportedly receptive to the idea, though it’s unclear whether that will change his decision. Previous lobbying efforts by McConnell — including a push for fellow Kentuckian 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Amul Thapar, who would have been the court’s first Asian-American nominee — have failed.

White House sources and those involved with the decision-making process have cautioned that only Trump knows whom he will pick, and he will be the one to announce it tonight — in true reality show fashion.