Philip Bump walks through the math showing why Bernie Sanders might emerge from Super Tuesday with an untouchable lead — and also may not be able to clinch the Democratic nomination before the convention.

“It’s not impossible that Sanders could consolidate enough support to clinch the nomination, nor is it impossible that he can be caught. I mean, obviously; only two states have voted. But these twin factors — the 15 percent threshold and the proportional distribution of delegates — make it harder for him to clinch and harder for him not to enter the convention with the most pledged delegates if FiveThirtyEight’s projections are right.”

The Atlantic: “Bernie Sanders got so close to running a primary challenge to President Barack Obama that Senator Harry Reid had to intervene to stop him.”

“It took Reid two conversations over the summer of 2011 to get Sanders to scrap the idea.”

“That summer, Sanders privately discussed a potential primary challenge to Obama with several people, including Patrick Leahy, his fellow Vermont senator. Leahy, alarmed, warned Jim Messina, Obama’s presidential reelection-campaign manager… David Plouffe, another Obama strategist, confirmed Messina’s account, as did another person familiar with what happened.”

“He’s made a tremendous fortune, he’s a brilliant guy… He’s got some, you know, really amazing ideas, he’s done a very, very good job as the mayor of New York.”

— Donald Trump, talking about Michael Bloomberg on Fox & Friends in 2013.

DNC Chairman Tom Perez told CNN he has “a lot of confidence” the Nevada caucuses will run smoothly following the chaos in this year’s Iowa caucuses.

Said Perez: “We have gone to school over the lessons of Iowa. We are as low-tech as is humanly possible, while still preserving efficiency.”

He also hinted that there could be a higher than usual turn-out in Nevada, enabled partly by the change in the rules to allow early voting.

The most unpopular qualities for a presidential candidate from the new NBC/WSJ poll:

• Socialist: 67%
• Heart attack in the past year: 57%
• Older than 75 years old: 53%
• Self-funder: 41%
• Under 40 years old: 40%
• Gay or lesbian: 27%
• Woman: 14%

A new Change Research poll in South Carolina finds Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders tied at 23% support each, followed by Tom Steyer at 20% and Pete Buttigieg at 15%.

“Mike Bloomberg’s campaign is sounding the alarm that Bernie Sanders will soon amass an unsurmountable delegate lead if the Democratic field stays split — and took the extraordinary step of suggesting laggards should drop out,” Axios reports.

Kevin Sheekey, Bloomberg’s top strategist, in a memo: “The fact is if the state of this race remains status quo — with Biden, Pete and Amy in the race on Super Tuesday — Bernie is likely to open up a delegate lead that seems nearly impossible to overcome… I don’t think many people understand the dire circumstances here.”

Related for members: Three Really Big Questions for Democrats