The 2020 Democrat presidential field is about to get locked by filing deadlines and that is making a lot of Democrats nervous.

If you want to run for president, it is a 50 state process that requires filing papers and whatever else is required to get on the ballot. Alabama’s filing deadline passed last week. New Hampshire and Arkansas expire this week. The heavy hitters of Illinois, California, and Texas are just weeks away. Ohio and North Carolina arrive before Christmas.

In other words, unless someone gets off the pot, the current 2020 crop of tired, old extremists is locked in forever. Which means one of them will face Trump in 2020, and a quick look around shows that Democrats are not happy about that.

There are rumblings about former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg seriously considering taking the plunge. There’s even talk about former Attorney General Eric Holder. And because she’s a vampire who keeps coming back in terrible sequels, there’s Hillary.

No one knows what’s going to happen, but it was not supposed to be like this…

For the last four years, Trump has been smeared by the media and Democrats (but I repeat myself) as a crazed rapist, racist, and traitor owned by the Russians who must be impeached… Gee, 2020 should be a lay-up for Democrats; after all, we have all those Fox News polls proving Trump is down something like 99 points to every Democrat politician in America, including Ted Kennedy’s corpse.

Why so nervous, Democrats?

Why so nervous, media?

Why this search for a last-minute ringer when the walls are closing in on Drumpf fer realsies this time?

Well, if there’s one thing Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) remember, it’s how meaningless those polls were in 2020… And what I mean by “remember” is “still haven’t come to terms with or accepted.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden is the great slight hope, has the best chance against Trump, and he’s not only a walking-talking example of the physical and mental deterioration that awaits those of us lucky enough to live so long, no matter how much the media scream HOAX on his behalf, this Ukraine-China-Hunter thing is a real problem.

Biden was a terrible candidate before he started operating just a notch above “zombie.” Today he’s not just a mess, his son Hunter’s appallingly mercenary, greedy, and unethical business practices, his shameless looting of two countries while his sitting-vice president father led American policy there, is something the Trump campaign is already exploiting.

Remember how Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election team looked at the lay of the Republican presidential field and correctly guessed Mitt Romney would come out on top? It was a gamble, but with an unlimited pile of money, it really wasn’t, and that unlimited pile of money allowed Team Obama to define Romney as a corporate raider even before he secured the nomination.

It was a brilliant play on Obama’s part, and it worked, and now Team Trump is doing the same to Biden. The far-left Politico reports the Trump campaign has spent $287,000 just in Iowa on ads that blast Biden over Ukraine, and this pales compared to the money spent on ads targeting Biden on Facebook and YouTube.

Biden is already getting roughed up and defined by Trump, his numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire are cratering, and while he’s still in the lead nationally, he’s nowhere near the safe zone of 35 percent. Regardless, Iowa and New Hampshire matter. If you lose there, your national lead evaporates mighty quick.

And if Biden loses the nomination, that leaves the socialists Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, or Pete Buttigieg, the 11-year-old mayor black people can’t stand.

Help us, Michael Bloomberg, you’re our only hope…

The New York Post’s Michael Goodwin is a smart political observer immune to the conventional wisdom that is always wrong, and he thinks Bloomberg is a good bet for Democrats. He makes some good points, but Bloomberg’s biggest problem — by far — is that he has no natural constituency. For all his own problems, Biden has the working class and blacks. Warren and Sanders have the far-far-left. Buttigieg is making a serious play for the same kind of young people who fell in love with Obama.

Who does Bloomberg have? He’s a billionaire businessman, a pushing 80 technocrat… He might be seen as a “moderate” in the Democrat Party, a centrist, but that is where he stands politically, which has zero to do with winning votes. Amy Klobuchar is a centrist — she’s polling at 1 percent. John Hickenlooper is a centrist governor from the swing state of Colorado, he’s already been forced to drop out. The term “centrist” is meaningless without a constituency.

Sure, never bet against a guy who can write a check for $52 billion, but already Bloomberg has said he would not even try to win Iowa and New Hampshire, which I guess is a strategy — a BAD Strategy. We have decades of data proving Iowa and New Hampshire matter. You either get shot out of one of those cannons or you are doomed.

Ask Rudy Giuliani about this strategy. One of the most beloved politicians in 2008 doomed himself under the belief he could ignore Iowa and New Hampshire as he sat on his national and Florida lead and waited for the campaign to come to him. But by the time it did, he had collapsed in the polls.

Yes, Democrats have every reason to be nervous, and after Republicans turn these impeachment hearings into The Joe and Hunter Biden Looted Ukraine and China Show, they will have even more reason.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.