Sat - Remember Hearing that Young People Don't Vote?

Kerch Bridge is Falling Down, Falling Down, Falling Down

The only bridge connecting Russia to Crimea was damaged in a large explosion.

Light traffic has resumed on Russia's only bridge to Crimea, hours after a huge blast brought down sections of the roadway.

The blast on Europe's longest bridge - a symbol of Russia's annexation of the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 - killed three people, investigators say.

The victims were in a nearby car when a lorry blew up, Russian officials claim.

The railway part of the bridge - where oil tankers caught fire - has also apparently reopened.

Video showed cars using the roadway after officials announced the limited reopening.

The rail and road crossing was opened in 2018 and is a key supply route for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.








If the bridge is closed, only one single, critical route will tie together Russia’s forces across southern Ukraine.

Looking at a large scale view of Crimea and the rest of southern Ukraine, it’s possible to see how critical the Kerch bridge is to connecting Russia, not just with Ukraine, but with Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts. Now Russia’s ability to move men and materiel across southern Ukraine leans heavily on a single route — the one that runs from Nova Kakhovka to Melitopol to Berdyansk to Mariupol and eastward into Russia. That’s the M14 highway. When it comes to rail routes, Russia’s options are less direct. Most of the lines that connect to the border end in the snarl of tracks at the Mariupol railyard. There are other lines that head northwest from the port city of Berdyansk.

Two places stand out when looking at Russia’s routing options across southern Ukraine: the large city of Melitpol, which is a hub for multiple highways and rail lines, and to a lesser extent the city of Tokmak, which is already plays the same kind of role on this front that Vovchansk did for supplying the area around Izyum.

And in another of those “gee, what a coincidence” moments, there’s been one theme playing steadily on Russia Telegram channels over the last week. One big concern. As we mentioned back on Thursday, that concern is this:

Multiple Russian sources are reporting a large build-up of Ukrainian vehicles south of the city of Zaporizhzhia in preparation for what looks to be the opening of a third counteroffensive. Russian forces are also reporting, disgustedly, that their leadership seems to be making no move to prepare for this new counter-invasion into what Vladimir Putin so recently declared “Russian territory.”

The Kids Are All Right

Millennial and Gen Z voters have serious power in the South.

A sharp generation gap is among the most consistent findings in public polling across almost every competitive Senate race this year. Here in Georgia, for instance, an array of recent public polls (including surveys by Quinnipiac University, Marist College, Monmouth University, and the University of Georgia) have found Warnock leading the Republican Herschel Walker by as much as two to one among young adults from about 18 to 34 and consistently by a margin of about 10 percentage points among those in early middle age. Polls almost always show Walker at least slightly ahead among those in their later working years, and solidly leading among those 65 and older.

(This week’s explosive allegations about Walker—the claim that he allegedly funded an abortion for a girlfriend and the subsequent accusations of domestic violence from his son—seem likely to weaken him, perhaps substantially, with every group, but are unlikely to erase these sharp generational differences.) ..

Remember Hearing that Young People Don't Vote?

Millennials entered the electorate in large numbers in the 2004 election; the party has routinely carried about three-fifths of young adults in recent presidential contests. In 2018, Democrats hit a peak of support among young voters, winning two-thirds of those younger than 30 and three-fifths of those ages 30 to 44, according to estimates by Catalist, a Democratic targeting firm…

Compared with 2014, youth turnout increased in every state in 2018, more than doubling across the country overall, Circle, a think tank at Tufts University that studies young voters, has calculated. Some of the biggest increases occurred in Sun Belt states where the youth population is the most racially diverse, including Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada.

The turnout surge continued into 2020, when exactly half of adults younger than 30 showed up to vote, a big increase from the 39 percent in 2016, Circle concluded. Georgia again ranked among the states with the biggest youth-turnout increase compared with 2016—a key factor in the Democrats’ razor-thin victories there in the presidential race and the two Senate runoffs.

I Doubt They Were Really Gentlemen

New Hampshire GOP Senate nominee Don Bolduc told supporters this week that he thinks the future of abortion rights “belongs” to Republican “gentlemen” state lawmakers, who he claims know best how to give women a voice on their reproductive rights.

During a Wednesday night town hall in Auburn, New Hampshire, Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general, weighed in on whether he thinks abortion rights should be decided at the state level or the federal level.

“It belongs to the state. It belongs to these gentlemen right here, who are state legislators representing you,” Bolduc said, motioning to at least two Republican state representatives in the room, Jason Osborne and Jess Edwards.