They tend not to be motivated by any single, unifying issue, making the job of messaging harder. They are declaring themselves unaffiliated with either party at a rate faster than any other generation. They say the political process and the two-party system are unresponsive to their concerns. And…young people often display little understanding of how a protest vote for a third-party candidate, or not voting at all, can alter the outcome of a close election.

As the piece notes, millennials continue to support third party candidates with surprising persistence, which is defying historical trends, but the Clinton camp is working hard to change it.

* REPUBLICANS WARN AGAINST ATTACKING BILL’S SEX LIFE: With the Trump campaign seemingly mulling whether he will go hard at Bill Clinton’s infidelities at the next debate, NBC News reports that GOP strategists think it’s an awful idea:

Tim Miller and Katie Packer, two Republican strategists who oppose Trump, conducted focus groups before the primaries where they tested attacks tied to the former president’s sex scandals with female swing voters. They concluded it was a political dead end. “These voters were completely turned off and disgusted by it,” Miller said in an e-mail. “We found time and again these attacks turned Hillary into a victim and that it engendered sympathy for her.”

I don’t think Trump will ultimately go here, and the likelihood that it would further alienate women is only one of many reasons.

* CLINTON CAMPAIGN VIDEO RIDICULES TRUMP: The Clinton campaign has released a new video that features footage of all of the times during the debate that Trump claimed not to have said something in the past — juxtaposed with footage of him saying those things.

What’s remarkable is the conviction and indignation with which Trump denies saying these things, even though there is clear, incontrovertible evidence on video that he did.

* CLINTON LEADS IN SWING STATES, POLLS FIND: A new batch of Public Policy Polling surveys taken entirely after the debate shows Clinton leading in multiple swing states: In Colorado (46-40); in Florida (45-43); in North Carolina (44-42); in Pennsylvania (45-39); and in Virginia (46-40). The polls show voters in all these states think by a wide margin that she won the debate.

Still, we are going to need a lot more post-debate polling to gauge its true impact, and as always, keep focused on the national and state polling averages.

* TRUMP POSES LONG-TERM DANGER TO GOP: E.J. Dionne writes today that Republicans who are supporting Trump are putting the party in a precarious long-term position: