In the new NPR/Marist poll, Bernie is at 31% and second-place goes to Bloomberg, who gets 19%, enough to put him in tomorrow's debate.

Bloomberg needed a 4th poll giving him at least 10% nationally, and now he has it.

3rd and 4th places go to Biden (15%) and Warren (12%), and both of them are moving downward — Biden down 9 points and Warren down 5. Buttigieg and Klobuchar are both below 10% — the cut-off point for qualifying for the debate if you're qualifying on national polls.

(You can also qualify for this debate by hitting 12% in 2 polls from SC or Nevada or by having already won a delegate. Buttigieg, Sanders, Warren, Klobuchar, and Biden have all won delegates — 23, 21, 8, 7, and 6, respectively.)

High stakes for tomorrow's debate! This is where people will decide if Bloomberg deserves to become the focus of all the stop-Bernie action. If he doesn't, that action will continue to be diffused over 5 candidates, unless one of the other 4 — Buttigieg, Warren, Klobuchar, or Biden — suddenly emerges as the one to back. It's hard to see how anyone other than Bloomberg has a shot at becoming The One, so the anti-Bernie anti-Trumpsters have got to be looking at Bloomberg with an absurd amount of expectation.

It's hard to see how he can do well enough in the debate for that to happen. I think the 5 — that is, all the Democratic non-Bernies — will simply try to keep a majority away from Bernie and position themselves to win at the convention. That's 5 months away. And then there are only 3 1/2 months before the election. Democrats need a way to get through the next 5 months without devolving into brand-destroying chaos. Unless Buttigieg, Warren, Klobuchar, and Biden get together and pick one of them to go forward, the answer is going to be Bloomberg.

Unless he's awful at that debate.

And won't Buttigieg, Sanders, Warren, Klobuchar, and Biden all try to make him look awful?

I would advise Buttigieg, Warren, Klobuchar, and Biden to get together and pick one. But they need to do it soon. If I picture those 4 huddling and really trying to decide which of the 4 of them should take up the banner of moderate anti-Trumpism, I see the choice as Amy Klobuchar. She's the best age (59), she's female, and she's got a long record in the Senate. But that's too sensible, isn't it? The Democrats are so keyed up to fight that they're not going to accept mere sensibleness.

And yet mere sensibleness is also all Bloomberg purports to be. But he's spending billions to make that feel good, good enough to let go of the crazy excitement that is Bernie Sanders.

And Donald Trump.

Here's an article at Politico about Bloomberg's debate prep:

[H]is team is working to get him to project comfort and composure in the line of fire, while portraying him as the toughest Democrat to take on Donald Trump. Howard Wolfson, the veteran Democratic strategist who joined Bloomberg’s orbit in 2009 after working on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential race, is playing the role of Sanders... Wolfson joked that his inspiration for Sanders came from watching “Statler and Waldorf,” the cantankerous elderly Muppets who lob critiques from their balcony seats...

How much did Bloomie pay him for that?

Bloomberg is trying to hone a crisp and energetic appeal to voters that will contrast with Biden— another white, male septuagenarian on stage, according to advisers. Other potential pitfalls for Bloomberg are his tendency to use dated language — words like “bawdy,” for instance — to dismiss concerns about his financial news service’s work culture for female employees....

So.... understanding the sexual harassment problem as a problem of using "dated language" and understanding one's opponents in terms of really old TV puppet shows. You can have billions of dollars to spend but you can only buy what's out there for sale. And Bloomberg — who, if elected, will make a lot of hiring decisions — found Wolfson, the man who helped Hillary lose.