First Read: “He simply has to come across as electable. Sure, he’s faring well in many general-election polls right now. But make no mistake: His comment on Meet the Press Sunday that he’s not a capitalist isn’t a winning general-election message, especially when being a socialist running for president is more unpopular than being a Muslim or an atheist.”

“Another question we have: How does Sanders hold up over two hours of debate? One way to judge tonight’s debate is to gauge who does a better job shoring up his/her weakness — Clinton’s not-always progressive views vs. Sanders’ electability doubts.”

The New York Times looks at six key moments in a recent Bernie Sanders speech.

“Something surprising happens when Bernie Sanders starts speaking at his presidential campaign rallies. He doesn’t ingratiate himself with audiences by praising their hometowns, or telling easy jokes, the way many candidates do. He gets right down to business, delivering a searing indictment of American politics, with crusty, to-the-barricades exhortations.”

Politico: Sanders plans fundraising push around debate

The Guardian: “Out on the campaign trail, Bernie Sanders’ full-throated attacks on the billionaire class have been so loud and passionate that aides have taken to offering him honey, to help soothe noticeably wrecked vocal cords. But when he takes on Hillary Clinton for the first time, in a television studio in Las Vegas on Tuesday night, staff members are hoping he will bring his indoor voice instead of the gravelly bark that has electrified record crowds at rallies.”

“When one of your Republican colleagues gets on the show, do you say, ‘Are you a capitalist?’  Have you ever referred to them as capitalists?”

— Sen. Bernie Sanders, on Meet the Press, when asked if he was a socialist.

Sen. Bernie Sanders “is uninterested in going through the motions of typical debate practice,” Politico reports.

“While CNN is billing the event as a showdown, Sanders’ team sees the first Democratic debate as a chance to introduce a fairly niche candidate to a national audience. So his team intends to let him do what he’s been doing. Far from preparing lines to deploy against Clinton — let alone O’Malley, Lincoln Chafee, or Jim Webb — Sanders plans to dish policy details, learned through a handful of briefings with experts brought in by his campaign.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders “drew huge crowds in Massachusetts on Saturday as he sought to attract donors and build a political infrastructure that will boost his campaign a month after the first two states vote,” the Boston Globe reports.

“Sanders addressed a near-capacity crowd of 20,000 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, with a few thousand more watching a feed of his address… It was the third-largest rally Sanders has held this year, smaller only than events in Portland, Ore., and Los Angeles in August. To put it in context, the number of people who showed up to see Sanders at the convention center was nearly three times the population of Montpelier, the capital of the US senator’s home state of Vermont.”

Just after announcing big fundraising numbers, Sen. Bernie Sanders told MSNBC that his campaign is “in this to the finish.”

Said Sanders: “I think what the results today show is that we are going to have more than enough money to run very strong campaigns in New Hampshire, in Iowa, in Nevada and South Carolina, the first elections that are coming up. But we’re going to be very strong on Super Tuesday as well. So we now have enough money to run a winning campaign.”

He added: “I’ll let people read what secretary Clinton’s fundraising is about and where she gets her money. I think there is a very different pattern. I would rather be where I am, that’s the way I like to do politics, involve whole lots of people.”

Rick Klein: “Which is more surprising – that Bernie Sanders is within financial striking distance of Hillary Clinton, or that he’s within polling striking distance without spending any of that cash on ads? What’s clear is that one avenue for Clinton to beat Sanders – for Sanders to beat himself by running out of cash after the first round of early states – is now closed. Sanders has his war chest, and an ability to replenish it via small-dollar donors that the Clinton apparatus can’t match.”

“What’s becoming clear is that any strategy that depends on outside money to boost a candidate is basing that strategy on hope, not history. If anything, this election cycle has shown the limits of Super PACs – think Rick Perry and Scott Walker. The Clinton campaign has weapons left to deploy, including, of course, Bill Clinton. But the point is that it’s increasingly likely those weapons will have to come out during the primary season.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders “raised more than $24 million for his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in the last three months, a significant sum that was fueled by a torrid pace of online donations: more than a million so far,” the New York Times reports.

“Sanders advisers, in announcing the fund-raising tally on Wednesday night, also said that the senator had more than $25 million in cash on hand.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders said his campaign reached its goal of one million individual online contributions, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“He is the first candidate of the 2016 campaign to announce it had reached this number – and he reached it faster than President Obama did in 2008 and 2012. The Sanders campaign has touted its goal of hitting one million online donations by tonight’s deadline to spur more individuals to donate.”

Washington Post: “The presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders said Thursday that it had raised more than $1.2 million online in 48 hours after research surfaced from a super PAC backing Hillary Clinton that linked the Vermont senator to the ‘extreme’ views of Jeremy Corbyn, the new leader of the United Kingdom’s Labour Party.”

“The burst of money Sanders received online was unprecedented, according to a statement Thursday by Erin Hill, executive director of ActBlue, an online fundraising service used by Sanders and scores of Democrats.”

Mark Murray: “Strikingly, Sanders has to yet win an endorsement from a sitting Democratic senator, House member or governor, according to FiveThirtyEight.com’s endorsement tracker.”

“By contrast, Clinton has racked up endorsements from 30 senators, seven governors and more than 100 House members – including the top politicians from Sanders’ home state of Vermont: Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) and Gov. Peter Shumlin. (Vermont’s other major statewide politician, Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., has yet to endorse.)”

Sen. Bernie Sanders “took his message of confronting inequality to unfamiliar ground on Monday at Liberty University, a leading evangelical Christian college, where he sought to build what he called ‘common ground’ with students, beginning with the foundations of Christianity itself: the Bible,” the New York Times reports.

Said Sanders: “I am far, far from a perfect human being, but I am motivated by a vision which exists in all of the great religions — in Christianity, in Judaism, in Islam, Buddhism and other religions — and which is so beautifully and clearly stated in Matthew 7:12. And it states: ‘So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the law and the prophets.’ That is the golden rule. Do to others what you would have them do to you.”

He added: “It is not very complicated.”

“Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose liberal call to action has propelled his long-shot presidential campaign, is proposing an array of new programs that would amount to the largest peacetime expansion of government in modern American history.”

“In all, he backs at least $18 trillion in new spending over a decade, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal, a sum that alarms conservatives and gives even many Democrats pause. Mr. Sanders sees the money as going to essential government services at a time of increasing strain on the middle class.”