A new Public Policy Polling survey in South Carolina finds Joe Biden leading the Democratic field with 36%, followed by Bernie Sanders at 21%, Elizabeth Warren at 8%, Pete Buttigieg at 7%, Tom Steyer at 7% and Amy Klobuchar at 3%.

Caveat: This poll shows a much larger lead for Biden than other recent polls.

Jonathan Chait: “All the Democratic candidates have shortcomings in their record or their personality that Trump could exploit. What sets Sanders apart from the field is that his weaknesses aren’t ugly comments from the past or unflattering episodes in his history, but his own core program. He has functionally reverse-engineered Trump’s preferred attacks into a series of campaign promises.”

“Just how damaging these positions will ultimately prove in the general election is impossible to measure. The effect is probably not zero. As a general rule, politicians for every position from dog catcher on up understand that advocating unpopular things makes winning elections harder. Not impossible, but harder. All things being equal, a candidate for dog catcher who promises to round up and cook stray pets at random has less chance of winning. Sanders can still overcome this and win, of course. One can even imagine circumstances — like a sudden, deep recession — in which he would probably win. One could likewise imagine a town that elects the dog-barbecue candidate for dog catcher. All that said, the scale of the downside risk seems unnervingly high.”

A new Morning Consult poll of Democratic primary voters finds Bernie Sanders leading the field with 32%, followed by Mike Bloomberg at 19%, Joe Biden at 18%, Pete Buttigieg at 11%, Elizabeth Warren at 11%, Amy Klobuchar at 4% and Tom Steyer at 3%.

Key finding: 33% of black primary voters said they’re backing Sanders, compared with 29% who said Biden.

“Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaign plans to unleash its cash-flush media operation against Bernie Sanders in the wake of the Vermont senator’s resounding victory in the Nevada caucuses,” CNBC reports.

“The campaign plans a multipronged attack, including the publication of opposition research on Sanders, these people said. It will also push out digital attack ads focused on Sanders’ record.”

“The attacks on Sanders, who has accused Bloomberg of trying to buy the Democratic nomination, will also attempt to highlight negative aspects of his record on race relations both as a congressman and senator, the sources said. This comes after Sanders, now seen as the Democratic front-runner, has taken aim at Bloomberg for his support of a policing policy known as stop-and-frisk that often targeted black and Latino people.”

David Corn: Why Bernie Sanders should welcome negative ads against him.

Advertising Analytics says Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaign has now spent $509,512,884 on advertising across all media types.

Philip Bump: “It’s trite to say that the result of a Trump-Sanders election is nearly impossible to predict, but that doesn’t make it incorrect.”

“We only need to look back four years to see how things can get wonky quickly. Clinton led Trump nearly every day of 2016 and had a wide lead in late October. At the very end of the contest, outside factors — the letter from then FBI director James B. Comey, for one — and other shifts — such as skeptical independents deciding on Trump — combined to give Trump an edge in places where he needed one. Trump’s election was not really predictable in February 2016, but it happened anyway.”

“One can’t unilaterally reject Sanders’s chances any more than you might reject that of Trump. It’s safe to say that the only views of the outcome of the November election that should be rejected are those which are offered with certainty.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) recorded a video — oddly while he was driving a car — which laments the dangers of democratic socialism.

Said Rubio: “Democratic socialism sounds benign, but at the core of Democratic socialism is Marxism, and at the core of Marxism is this fake offer that if you turn over more of your individual freedom, we’re going to provide you security. We’re going to provide you free healthcare. We’re going to provide you free education.”

He added: “But the problem is that when they can’t deliver on it or you’re not happy with it, you don’t get your freedoms back.”

Terry Sullivan: “We’ve seen this movie before, but for some reason the critics seem convinced it will have a different ending this time: A bombastic septuagenarian political outsider calls out a rigged system to the cheering masses. He finishes second in Iowa and first in New Hampshire and Nevada. He leads all the national polls while the establishment candidates wage all-out war on one another. Meanwhile, the media dismisses his chances and an increasingly worried political establishment convinces itself it’s only a fluke, that the worst case is a chaotic convention that ultimately nominates a mainstream candidate.”

“You’d think we political types would know better by now. The most important thing I learned managing Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential race was that the old political norms were dead. Experts and pundits’ predictions were often no more than guesses based on the way things used to be. Media groupthink only made these outdated and misguided notions more stubborn.”

“Am I the only one who was embarrassed enough at missing the 2016 political movement that elected Donald Trump that I rethought my approach to modern politics?”

Michael Bloomberg will postpone a CNN town hall slated for Monday to prepare for Tuesday’s debate in South Carolina, The Hill reports.

A new University of Houston poll in Texas finds Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders tied in the Democratic presidential race with 22%, followed by Elizabeth Warren at 18%, Mike Bloomberg at 13%, Pete Buttigieg at 12% and Amy Klobuchar at 7%.

A new Minnesota Public Radio/Star Tribune Minnesota poll finds Amy Klobuchar leading the Democratic presidential field in her home state with 29%, followed by Bernie Sanders at 23% and Elizabeth Warren at 11%.

No other candidate polled in double digits and 21% said they remain undecided.

“As the rest of the top Democratic presidential candidates competed for delegates in Nevada and held rallies in Super Tuesday states all weekend, Michael Bloomberg kept away from the public eye,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“He was instead preparing for another debate, seeking to head off a repeat of a lackluster performance that rattled even his supporters.”

“Mr. Bloomberg attended a campaign event in Utah the morning after Wednesday’s debate in Las Vegas but has since held no public events, spending his time once again preparing for questions he had already studied for—and yet stumbled through in the last gathering. He is also preparing to attack front-runner Bernie Sanders directly, hoping to go on the offensive in the coming debate.”