Donald Trump’s foreign policy was poorly received by neoconservatives, as is obvious if you look at the reaction at the Washington Post. Pro-Iraq War editorial board chief Fred Hiatt said that Trump’s vision was incoherent, inconsistent, and incomprehensible. Columnist Charles Krauthammer described the speech as incoherent, inconsistent, and jumbled. While the Post’s resident columnist/blogger Jennifer Rubin expressed concern that, based on Trump’s language, he might be a malleable mouthpiece of anti-Semites.

If neoconservatives come pretty close to being always wrong, the Post’s reaction might be considered the highest form of praise. Unfortunately, most of their criticisms are accurate. This is particularly true when they go after Trump for his looseness with the facts, his contradictory and mutually exclusive messages, and his praise of unpredictability.

For example, Fred Hiatt nailed Trump for insisting that we “abandon defense commitments to allies because of the allegedly weakened state of the U.S. economy” at the same time that he criticizes President Obama for not being a steadfast friend to our allies. Krauthammer wondered how Trump could criticize Obama for letting Iran become a regional power and promise to bring stability to the Middle East without having any commitment to keep a presence there or to take any risks or to make any expenditures.

If there is any remaining doubt about how neoconservatives view Trump’s foreign policy ideas, Sen. Lindsey Graham removed them:

Sen. Lindsey Graham tore into Donald Trump’s speech on foreign policy, calling it “unnerving,” “pathetic” and “scary.”

The South Carolina Republican former presidential candidate told WABC Radio on Wednesday that the speech was “nonsensical” and showed that Trump “has no understanding of the world and the role we play.”

“This speech was unnerving. It was pathetic in its content, and it was scary in terms of its construct. If you had any doubt that Donald Trump is not fit to be commander in chief, this speech should’ve removed it,” Graham said. “It took every problem and fear I have with Donald Trump and put in on steroids.”

He added: “It was like a guy from New York reading a speech that somebody wrote for him that he edited that makes no sense.” And: “It was not a conservative speech. This was a blend of random thoughts built around Rand Paul’s view of the world.”

It’s true that Graham’s response there is a substance-free ad hominem attack, but he did get around to making specific critiques. In particular, he noted that Trump can’t keep his promises to both minimize our presence in the Middle East and destroy ISIS in short order without significant alliances with the regimes in the Middle East. But he won’t be improving our alliances by talking negatively about Islam as a religion and banning Muslims from entering the United States. Graham said that the problem with Obama is that he isn’t seen as a reliable ally by these despots, but that Trump “is worse than Obama…the entire world is going to look at Donald Trump as a guy who doesn’t understand the role of America, that doesn’t understand the benefit of these alliances.”

Graham also blasted Trump’s position on NATO and said that “the idea of dismembering NATO would be the best thing possible for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”

It’s not that Graham properly understands “the role of America” or that he gets the downsides of our alliances with foreign dictatorial regimes. But he understands that you can’t win a war against radicals in the Arab world by making enemies of every Arab (and Muslim) in the world. Graham understands that you can’t criticize the president for being a lousy friend and then rip up longstanding and uncontroversial agreements with those friends while demanding both more money and more deference.

A full treatment of Trump’s speech and foreign policy ideas is beyond the scope of this blog piece, but he’s about to become the leader of a party that is filled with neoconservatives.

They aren’t going to pretend that the emperor has clothes on.

And, for once in their lives, they’re largely right.

For a while now, Greg Sargent has been speculating about Bernie Sanders’ end game in this presidential primary. The candidate himself has said that it will be up to Clinton to win over his supporters. And at times, he has even suggested that she will need to adopt some of his campaign promises in order to do so - like advocating for single payer and free public college tuition. It’s hard to know if he is really serious about that. But at any rate, it is not going to happen. Clinton ran on her own platform and is winning the primary. She’s not likely to adopt the agenda of the guy who is losing.

Yesterday, Sanders seemed to indicate a push for the Democratic Party to adopt some changes to their election rules and strategy. Specifically, he called for three things:

1. Automatic voter registration
2. Same-day registration and open primaries
3. A 50-state strategy

To the extent that Sanders intends to push to have these issues included in the Democratic platform during the convention this summer, that would be an interesting discussion. If adopted, they would set these up as goals for the Party to work towards. But the national party can’t simply make them happen. The first two involve state parties and legislatures - who establish these rules. This is something that Sanders often fails to articulate - like when he promised that at the end of his first term as president, the U.S. would not have the highest incarceration rate in the world. He failed to mention that reaching that goal would primarily be up to states.

But the 50-state strategy is an interesting one on a different level. As Howard Dean demonstrated, it is certainly a priority that is set by the DNC. But if anyone remembers the argument over that one, it had to do with how the national party distributes funding. Those who opposed a 50-state strategy wanted the DNC to target its limited resources to races where they had determined it could actually make a difference. Dean wanted the funding to be distributed to state party leaders and let them decide.

From the perspective of Sanders and his supporters, this raises a couple of interesting questions. The most obvious is that the resources that are under discussion are the very ones he has criticized Clinton for helping to raise. Remember how the Sanders campaign reacted to the fundraiser hosted by George Clooney? It was all about raising money for the DNC and state parties. In other words, the money that would enable a 50-state strategy.

But the other issue is that Howard Dean’s success with the 50-state strategy resulted in the election of what we often call “Blue Dog Democrats” - especially in the South. They are also the ones who lost in 2010 and 2014. Many of the Sanders supporters I know were pretty happy to see them go.

I would suggest that these are all questions that would be good for Democrats to discuss. But as we’ve seen very often with Bernie Sanders, they lead to much more complicated questions and answers than he has articulated.

It didn’t get a lot of attention during a time when political campaigns are focused on what is wrong with America that the candidates promise to fix, but yesterday the CDC announced some great news.

The number of teenagers in the U.S. giving birth is at an all-time low, according to federal health officials. On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that teen birth rates have declined 61 percent since the early 1990s. In 1991, the birth rate among females age 15 to 19 was 61.8 per 1,000. As of 2014, that number has declined to 24.2 per 1,000, the lowest it’s been for decades.

Rates have declined across all racial and ethnic groups, even those that historically have had a higher number of teen pregnancies: Between 2006 and 2014, the largest decline occurred in Hispanics (51 percent) and blacks (44 percent), followed by whites (35 percent).

My first reaction was to remember when President Obama compared Republicans to Grumpy Cat.

While they try to convince us all that our country is on the verge of total collapse, the good news just continues to roll in.

But perhaps more importantly, we need to know what is working to reduce the number of teenagers giving birth - because there is still work to be done. That is one of those hard and complex questions to answer. But here’s a hint:

The findings of the report also appear to align with some nationwide trends in sex education. For example, the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks state policies on sex ed guidelines, found that Arkansas doesn’t have any state laws requiring public schools to teach any sex education curriculum—and if sex ed is provided, schools must include information on abstinence. Arkansas has the highest overall teen birth rate, according to the CDC report.

You might remember that during the last Bush administration, abstinence programs replaced much of the sex ed curriculums. That trend was reversed.

In recent years, the CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have provided resources for local communities to implement programs that provide evidence-based sex education and offer access to free birth control…

The CDC report finds that teen birth rates tend to be highest in places with more unemployment and lower education levels. Currently, the HHS’s Office of Adolescent Health funds more than 80 evidence-based Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs nationally, according to the CDC. These grants target underserved communities with large populations of teens at high risk for unwanted pregnancy.

We need to keep in mind that - while less glamorous than other issues currently being debated - this one affects some of the most vulnerable among us, perhaps for generations.

Poverty is both a cause and a consequence of teen pregnancy and childbearing. Two-thirds of young unmarried mothers are poor and around 25 percent go on welfare within three years of a child’s birth. Low educational attainment among teen mothers affects their economic opportunities and earnings in later years. Teen mothers are less likely to complete high school or college, and are therefore less likely to find well-paying jobs. This reality is evident in the fact that over the past 20 years, the median income for college graduates has increased 19 percent, while income among high school drop-outs has decreased 28 percent.The economic consequences of dropping out of school often contribute to the perpetual cycle of economic hardship and poverty that spans generations.

The news yesterday about the dramatic drop in teen births means that far fewer young women will be trapped in the generational cycle of poverty. At least one of the barriers to their success has been eliminated. That is something to be celebrated…and built upon. It’s also a pretty good place to play the woman card.

Update: When it comes to identifying the factors that have led to this reduction in the number of teen births, consider this from Kevin Drum:

The reduction in blood lead levels over the past few decades seems to be a very strong predictor of the drop in teen pregnancy levels…

Just keep in mind that sometimes neither “traditional moral values” nor economic stagnation provides all the answers. Sometimes you ought to be looking elsewhere.

* The line on Donald Trump is that he is outside the mainstream of Republican politics. But Franklin Foer’s article about his latest hire - Paul Manafort - demonstrates that the new campaign strategist’s associates have been some of the ugliest names in Republican circles. Rather than give you a quote, I’ll simply list them as they appear in the article: Roger Stone, Roy Cohn, Jeb Magruder, Charles Black and Lee Atwater.

* Giving Bobby Knight a national platform again is something else we can blame on Donald Trump. And so we get stupid headlines like this: Like Truman, Trump would have ‘guts to drop the bomb’.

* Paul Ryan continues to insist that Republicans are “this close” to offering an alternative to Obamacare. But then he goes and says something like this:

In election-year remarks that could shed light on an expected Republican healthcare alternative, Ryan said existing federal policy that prevents insurers from charging sick people higher rates for health coverage has raised costs for healthy consumers while undermining choice and competition.

….”Less than 10 percent of people under 65 are what we call people with pre-existing conditions, who are really kind of uninsurable,” Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, told a student audience at Georgetown University. “Let’s fund risk pools at the state level to subsidize their coverage, so that they can get affordable coverage,” he said. “You dramatically lower the price for everybody else. You make health insurance so much more affordable, so much more competitive and open up competition.”

As Kevin Drum says: High-Risk Pools Don’t Work, Have Never Worked, and Won’t Work in the Future.

* Chuck Grassley comes awfully close to saying “oops.”

Asked on Iowa’s “In Depth” whether the current GOP blockade was risky since President Obama’s pick Merrick Garland was more moderate than the type of judge Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders would likely appoint, Grassley reiterated the Republican line that the hardline position is about letting the voters have a voice.

“For people like me that want someone of a [Justice Antonin] Scalia variety to be on the Supreme Court or at least tending in that direction, we’ve got to know that if Hillary Clinton is elected president, it won’t be a Scalia-type person. If Trump’s elected president, it probably is a little more unknown than if there’s a [Sen. Ted] Cruz elected president, or a Kasich elected president” Grassley said, before musing on what Trump has said about his potential nominees.

“I would have to admit it’s a gamble,” he said.

* Good job Vermont!

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin has signed into law a bill that automatically registers eligible residents to vote when they apply for a driver’s license…

The Democratic governor signed the measure Thursday. It streamlines voter registration at the Department of Motor Vehicles with a system that identifies eligible Vermont residents and automatically sends their information to the town or city clerk for addition to the checklist, unless they opt out.

* Finally, Billy Paul died this week. Here he is just a little over a year ago singing his 1972 hit, “Me and Mrs. Jones.”

It is often assumed that the origins of the religious right’s political awakening (known back then as the so-called “moral majority”) was in response to the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe vs Wade decision. But in an article a friend recently pointed out to me from 2014, Randall Balmer locates it’s origins in another court case: Green vs Connally. It has interesting relevance for some of the issues we are hearing about today.

Balmer first points out that immediately before and after Roe vs Wade, evangelical leaders didn’t see a problem with abortion. He provides several quotes, including this one:

When the Roe decision was handed down, W. A. Criswell, the Southern Baptist Convention’s former president and pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas—also one of the most famous fundamentalists of the 20th century—was pleased: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” he said, “and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”

Meanwhile, Paul Weyrich was looking around for an issue that would galvanize evangelical support for Republicans. He found it in an edict from President Nixon’s Treasury Department that the the provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act precluded a tax-exempt status for private schools that discriminated against African Americans. Schools like Bob Jones University and Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University responded.

Although Bob Jones Jr., the school’s founder, argued that racial segregation was mandated by the Bible, Falwell and Weyrich quickly sought to shift the grounds of the debate, framing their opposition in terms of religious freedom rather than in defense of racial segregation.

In other words, “religious freedom” was used as the justification for discrimination. Sound familiar? That was the issue at stake in Green vs Connally.

It was on the heels of that argument that these religious leaders then turned to theologian Francis Schaeffer and surgeon C. Everett Koop (who later became Reagan’s Surgeon General) to stir up objections to abortion. They did that with the film Whatever Happened to the Human Race?

In the early months of 1979, Schaeffer and Koop, targeting an evangelical audience, toured the country with these films, which depicted the scourge of abortion in graphic terms—most memorably with a scene of plastic baby dolls strewn along the shores of the Dead Sea.

It is hard to avoid seeing a parallel with the doctored videos produced by The Center for Medical Progress that have raised evangelicals in opposition to Planned Parenthood.

All of that laid the groundwork for the involvement of the religious right in the 1980 presidential race between Carter and Reagan, although their positions on these issues were not as well-defined as we have been led to believe.

By 1980, even though Carter had sought, both as governor of Georgia and as president, to reduce the incidence of abortion, his refusal to seek a constitutional amendment outlawing it was viewed by politically conservative evangelicals as an unpardonable sin. Never mind the fact that his Republican opponent that year, Ronald Reagan, had signed into law, as governor of California in 1967, the most liberal abortion bill in the country. When Reagan addressed a rally of 10,000 evangelicals at Reunion Arena in Dallas in August 1980, he excoriated the “unconstitutional regulatory agenda” directed by the IRS “against independent schools,” but he made no mention of abortion. Nevertheless, leaders of the religious right hammered away at the issue, persuading many evangelicals to make support for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion a litmus test for their votes.

More than 35 years later, the religious right is still insisting that religious freedom is a justification for discrimination and using deceptive videos to ignite opposition to women’s reproductive health. As the saying goes…”everything old is new again.”

Whatever you might think about Ralph Nader as a presidential candidate, you should acknowledge his enormous contributions to consumer rights and safety, ecology, and good government. He spawned a generation of organizers that became known as Nader’s Raiders. It all really got started fifty years ago when Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile, a scathing critique of the auto industry’s indifference to driver safety, pollution, and even pedestrians.

To commemorate the book and to celebrate all the work that has been since, Nader is holding a conference May 23rd-May 26th in Washington DC at the DAR Constitution Hall. Dubbed the Breaking Through Power conference, it will have a large roster of speakers, many of whom you probably know nothing about. You might know some of them, however. Phil Donahue will be there. So will Jim Hightower. Bush administration critics Lawrence Wilkerson and Paul Pillar will make appearances, and you’ll be able to see presentations by folks like Bruce Fein, Obama-critic Jonathan Turley, and the famous whistleblower John Kiriakou.

The conference is organized with a theme for each day. The first day is general, but Day Two is about the media, Day Three is about militarism, and Day Four is about Congress. If you’re interested, you’ll be able to see filmmaker Michael Moore on the media day, prominent Bernie supporter Rep. Raul Grijalva on the day dedicated to war, and Fein and Turley discuss the legislative process on the 26th.

Nader is characterizing the gathering as a “citizen mobilization.”

The theme of this citizen mobilization will be elaborating ways to break through power to secure long-overdue democratic solutions made possible by a new muscular civic nexus between local communities and Washington, D.C.

On these four days, speakers will present innovative ideas and strategies designed to take existing civic groups to higher levels of effectiveness. The participants will be asked to support the creation of several new organizations. One such group will work to open up the commercial media, which use the public airwaves free of charge, to serious content. Another will facilitate action by retired military, national security and diplomatic officials who want to deter unconstitutional and unlawful plunges into wars that lead to calamitous and costly blowbacks.

This “Civic Mobilization” will involve thousands of people at Constitution Hall and around the country and connect long-available knowledge to long-neglected action for the necessities and aspirations of people from all backgrounds. Many of the presentations will feature reforms and redirections for the common good enjoy Left/Right support.

Nader is obviously hoping to use the anniversary of Unsafe at Any Speed as a catalyst to organize for significant new pressure points, and he’s trying to muster as much progressive support as he can get.

If you’re going to be around and you’re interested, you can register here.

Former Speaker of the House John Boehner made news last night when he made an appearance at Stanford University.

“You can call me boner, beaner, jackass, happy to answer to almost anything,” said former Speaker of the House John Boehner as he took the stage at CEMEX Auditorium on Wednesday evening. Boehner joined David M. Kennedy, faculty director and history professor emeritus, in a talk hosted by Stanford in Government (SIG) and the Stanford Speakers Bureau.

Naturally, the discussion focused on Boehner’s time at the helm of the House of Representatives, but they also discussed his view of the presidential race.

Segueing into the topic, Kennedy asked Boehner to be frank given that the event was not being broadcasted, and the former Speaker responded in kind. When specifically asked his opinions on Ted Cruz, Boehner made a face, drawing laughter from the crowd.

“Lucifer in the flesh,” the former speaker said. “I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”

Boehner went on to say that he’s “texting buddies” with Donald Trump, has played a lot of golf with him over the years, and that, although he doesn’t agree with all his policy proposals, he would vote for him in November. However, he bluntly said that he would not vote for Ted Cruz.

During his time as Speaker, Boehner struggled to deal with the non-reality-based Freedom Caucus rump of his party, and Sen. Ted Cruz played a big role in egging that faction on. This explains most of the animosity that Boehner is nursing now. But it would be a mistake to see Boehner as very grounded in reality himself, because he easily slips into the most submental conspiratorial gibberish.

On Clinton, Boehner’s reviews were more mixed. Early in the talk, the speaker impersonated Clinton, saying “Oh I’m a woman, vote for me,” to a negative crowd reaction. Later, he added that he had known Clinton for 25 years and finds her to be very accomplished and smart.

Boehner also speculated about surprises that could come closer to the Democratic National Convention if Hillary Clinton’s emails became a larger scandal.

“Don’t be shocked … if two weeks before the convention, here comes Joe Biden parachuting in and Barack Obama fanning the flames to make it all happen,” Boehner said.

At least in theory, the president could use his influence over the Justice Department and the Intelligence Community to turn Clinton’s email server issue into a crippling liability right before the Democratic convention in Philadelphia. He might then, in typical Frank Underwood style, orchestrate things so that Joe Biden could “parachute in” and act as the party’s savior.

But, despite Boehner’s previous seat in the highest corridors of power where he might have gleaned animosities that are invisible to the rest of us, there isn’t the slightest outward sign that President Obama is displeased to see Clinton emerge as his likely successor. The president has remained ostensibly neutral during the primaries, but he quietly got his message out that he preferred Clinton to Sanders, and that was reflected in (among other things) how the black community voted in the South and elsewhere.

It could be that the president actually would prefer Biden to Clinton, but to suggest that he would misuse his powers to sabotage Clinton at this late date in order to secure the presidency for his friend Biden is heat-fevered lunacy as far as I am concerned.

Boehner is supposed to be the sane one, and yet he’s just as infected as the rest of them.

Still, the fact that he wouldn’t vote for Cruz is a canary in the coal mine. Consider that during part of Boehner’s speakership his partner was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. And McConnell stated publicly just before the New York primary that he was still hoping for a brokered convention that could stop Trump. The most obvious beneficiary of a brokered convention would be Ted Cruz.

This is the definition of a fractured party.

Donald Trump rose to the top of the pack of Republican presidential candidates with his inflammatory rhetoric about Mexican immigrants. It looks like Hispanic Americans haven’t forgotten about that.

Registration among Hispanic voters is skyrocketing in a presidential election cycle dominated by Donald Trump and loud GOP cries to close the border.

Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Elected and Appointed Officials, projects 13.1 million Hispanics will vote nationwide in 2016, compared to 11.2 million in 2012 and 9.7 million in 2008.

Many of those new Hispanic voters are also expected to vote against Trump if he is the Republican nominee, something that appears much more likely after the front-runner’s sweeping primary victories Tuesday in five East Coast states.

A whopping 80 percent of respondents in a poll of registered Hispanic voters in Colorado and Nevada said Trump’s views on immigration made them less likely to vote for Republicans in November. In Florida, that number was 68 percent.

Note that the 80% of registered Hispanics in those states said they are less likely to vote for Republicans…not just Donald Trump. So his rantings are not only affecting the presidential race, but could also have an impact down ballot.

As November looks likely to be a contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, there are whispers of a possible landslide election in the making. It is interesting to note that the Republican Party had a moment of sanity immediately following the 2012 election when they published the infamous “autopsy” suggesting the need to do better outreach - specifically with women and Hispanics. But Donald Trump is succeeding in the Republican primary precisely because he is so intent on alienating those two groups (among others).

There are those who expect that Trump will somehow “pivot” during the general election and increase his appeal beyond the angry white male Republicans who are the base of his support right now. What is important to keep in mind, however, is that Trump is incapable of assessing his candidacy beyond the frame of a dominant white male perspective. That’s why he continually suggests that women, Hispanics and African Americans “love” him despite reality. He won’t feel the need to pivot because he honestly thinks he’s already arrived. In other words, he is living in a delusional world that reinforces his narcissism.

After the recent primaries, Donald Trump accused Hillary Clinton of playing the woman card. In response, she said, “deal me in.” The examples Clinton used in connection to that remark were all related to domestic policy. But as I’ve suggested in the past, we also need to aspire to a more feminist foreign policy. As Jenny Nordberg wrote:

Politicians rarely see women’s rights as having a direct impact on problems of war and peace. But according to this school of thought, a foreign policy that strives to address global gender inequity should in fact be on the agenda of any politician concerned with global security. Particularly at a time when the overwhelmingly male foreign-policy establishment, including international organizations such as the United Nations, appears to have run out of ideas for how to manage or even approach violent conflicts, a more gendered perspective on foreign affairs may in fact be a pragmatic strategy. The authors of “Sex and World Peace” go so far as to suggest that, in the future, “the clash of civilizations” will be based not on ethnic and political differences, but rather on beliefs about gender.

When I talk with my Democratic friends about the 2016 presidential election, this is the concern about Clinton that always comes up: is she too much of a hawk on foreign policy? That question was confirmed recently by Mark Landler’s article in the New York Times Magazine titled: How Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk. It only heightened the concern about Clinton’s tendency to favor military intervention - especially as the Middle East continues to be such a global hot-spot.

What is interesting to note about Landler’s article is that it is entirely constructed around what President Obama called the “Washington playbook.” In other words, it assumes that the best way to judge Clinton’s approach to foreign policy is to focus on her views about the military. That is especially interesting given that she was Secretary of State (as opposed to Secretary of Defense), where her role was primarily diplomacy. In order to get a full picture of what a Clinton presidency might look like with regards to foreign policy, it is important to look at her full record in that office.

Here is what Secretary Clinton said on International Women’s Day in 2012:

The United States is committed to making women and their advancement a cornerstone of our foreign policy not just because it’s the right thing to do. Investing in women and girls is good for societies, and it is also good for the future prosperity of countries. Women drive our economies. They build peace and prosperity and political stability for everyone—men and women, boys and girls. So let us recommit ourselves to a future of equality.

In her book Hard Choices, Clinton talked about the role of women in forging peace.

When women participate in peace processes, they tend to focus discussion on issues like human rights, justice, national reconciliation, and economic renewal that are critical to making peace. They generally build coalitions across ethnic and sectarian lines and are more likely to speak up for other marginalized groups. They often act as mediators and help to foster compromise.

That aspect of Clinton’s work as Secretary of State has gotten much less press. But one of the things she and President Obama developed was the first-ever National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. Here is a description from the introduction:

The goal of this National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security is as simple as it is profound: to empower half the world’s population as equal partners in preventing conflict and building peace in countries threatened and affected by war, violence, and insecurity. Achieving this goal is critical to our national and global security.

Deadly conflicts can be more effectively avoided, and peace can be best forged and sustained, when women become equal partners in all aspects of peace-building and conflict prevention, when their lives are protected, their experiences considered, and their voices heard.

As directed by the Executive Order signed by President Obama entitled Instituting a National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security, this Plan describes the course the United States Government will take to accelerate, institutionalize, and better coordinate our efforts to advance women’s inclusion in peace negotiations, peacebuilding activities, and conflict prevention; to protect women from sexual and gender-based violence; and to ensure equal access to relief and recovery assistance, in areas of conflict and insecurity.

Clinton described her work on that plan in Hard Choices:

I spent years trying to get generals, diplomats, and national security policymakers in our own country and around the world to tune in to this reality. I found sympathetic allies at the Pentagon and in the White House, including Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy and Admiral Sandy Winnefeld, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. State, USAID, and Defense got to work on a plan that would change the way diplomats, development experts, and military personnel interact with women in conflict and postconflict areas. There would be new emphasis on stopping rape and gender-based violence and empowering women to make and keep peace. We called it a National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security.

From there, Clinton’s State Department put together an implementation plan on the National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security.

As Gayle Tzemach Lemmon documented back in 2011, much of this work relied on what she called “Clinton’s knack for personalizing foreign policy.” She gave examples of how the SoS made it a centerpiece of everything from online discussion groups in Egypt during the Arab Spring to conversations with heads of state and interagency task force meetings with other members of the Cabinet. But here is how Clinton defined one of her main challenges (from Hard Choices):

We had to push tradition-bound bureaus and agencies to think differently about the role of women in conflicts and peacemaking, economic and democratic development, public health, and more. I didn’t want [the Office of Global Women’s Issues] to be the only place where this work was done; rather I wanted it to be integrated into the daily routine of our diplomats and development experts everywhere.

Lemmon discussed one of the ways Clinton addressed that:

For her part, Clinton says that her ambition now is to move the discussion beyond a reliance on her own celebrity. She must, she says, take her work on women’s behalf “out of the interpersonal and turn it into the international.” At the State Department, that goal is reflected in a new and sweeping strategic blueprint known as the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), which establishes priorities over a four-year horizon. Women and girls are mentioned 133 times across the 220 pages of the final QDDR document.

That sounds a lot like the leg work her successor John Kerry put in to embedding a focus on climate change into every aspect of the State Department - something that eventually led to the Paris Agreement.

I am not highlighting any of this in order to completely dismiss the concerns people have about Clinton’s view on the role of the military. But to focus only on that is to build a caricature of a very complex woman. If she is elected president, we have no way of knowing what kind of foreign crises she might face. What we can know is that she will focus much of her work on engaging women both here at home and abroad in the process of forging peace and ensuring security. That has been her commitment since she said this back in 1995 at the World Conference on Women:

If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all. As long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace everywhere in the world, as long as girls and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled, subjected to violence in and outside their homes—the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be realized.

It seems like one of those days when only a twitterific “Quick Takes” will do.

Did you hear that Donald Trump accused Hillary Clinton of playing the “woman card?”

https://t.co/6Prkac0TrI https://t.co/wD5bbyER2T pic.twitter.com/ol5gyB5kw2

— Cathy (@cp2austin) April 27, 2016

If Donald Trump were a man, I don't think he'd insult women so often. https://t.co/7rwwlcox3b

— Josh Greenman (@joshgreenman) April 27, 2016

The absurd notion of cards—race cards, woman cards—is meant only to silence black people and women.

— Touré (@Toure) April 27, 2016

Next, Trump gave a speech on foreign policy.

Trump just called for an "unpredictable" US foreign policy. Really. He's 100-1 against to win the general. But that 1% chance is horrifying.

— Dan Murphy (@bungdan) April 27, 2016

To say this Trump foreign policy speech is light on specifics is an insult to specifics.

— Chris Cillizza (@TheFix) April 27, 2016

Not sure who is advising Trump on foreign policy but I can understand why he’s not revealing their names.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) April 27, 2016

Then, Ted Cruz (the man who will never be president) decided that today was a good day to announce a running mate.

If Carly Fiorina is the more relatable side of your ticket, then you're probably in trouble.

— Ben Greenman (@bengreenman) April 27, 2016

Brilliant move by Cruz. Probably brings both of Carly's supporters into his camp

— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) April 27, 2016

Your VP pick is supposed to HELP you.#MemosTedCruzDidntGet

— Nefarious Newt (@NefariousNewt) April 27, 2016

Yes…this really happened.

VINE: American Idol meets American politics https://t.co/DtewxqicKk

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) April 27, 2016

Finally, Greg wraps it all up.

What the heck, I mean, what…the..heck…between Trump foreign policy speech and now Carly singing…you know, wtf

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) April 27, 2016

There are big important things happening with Republicans today. For example, a former House Speaker was sentenced to jail time, a presidential candidate gave an incoherent speech about foreign policy and another one is about to announce a VP pick who is even less popular than he is. But seriously, doing anything more than simply note those things in passing is a sure-fire way to spread depression and cynicism.

Instead, I thought you might like to know that last month an 8 year old girl in Flint, Michigan wrote President Obama a letter.

Mr. President,

Hello my name is Mari Copeny and I’m 8 years old, I live in Flint, Michigan and I’m more commonly known around town as “Little Miss Flint”. I am one of the children that is effected by this water, and I’ve been doing my best to march in protest and to speak out for all the kids that live here in Flint. This Thursday I will be riding a bus to Washington, D.C. to watch the congressional hearings of our Governor Rick Snyder. I know this is probably an odd request but I would love for a chance to meet you or your wife. My mom said chances are you will be too busy with more important things, but there is a lot of people coming on these buses and even just a meeting from you or your wife would really lift people’s spirits. Thank you for all that do for our country. I look forward to being able to come to Washington and to be able to see Gov. Snyder in person and to be able to be in the city where you live.

Thank You
Mari Copeny

She got a response.

According to the White House, the President will “hear first-hand from Flint residents like Mari about the public health crisis, receive an in-person briefing on the federal efforts in place to help respond to the needs of the people of Flint, and speak directly with members of the Flint community.” Obviously, he’ll also be spending some time with a community organizer known as Little Miss Flint.

On July 18, 2013, Detroit became the largest city in U.S. history to file for bankruptcy. Almost three months later, U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen, the chief mediator appointed to midwife a settlement between the city of Detroit and its creditors, was coming to grips with the magnitude of the city’s fiscal crisis.

Without a massive infusion of cash or selling the city’s few assets, Detroit’s retirees faced a devastating loss of pension and health care benefits. Already the city’s emergency manager had engaged the auction firm Christie’s to appraise the most saleable masterpieces in the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). None of the museum’s city-owned treasures - not even the Van Goghs and Renoirs - were off the table.

Judge Rosen saw a global settlement of stakeholders’ claims as the only alternative to a protracted courtroom battle that would further deplete the city’s resources. But devising a settlement that would also protect the city’s art and its workers’ pensions looked unlikely, unless Rosen and his team of mediators could locate additional funding.

On a crisp afternoon in October 2013, Rosen ran into Mariam Noland, the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan’s president, at the nearby Gateway Deli where they were both grabbing a quick lunch. “If I can help in any way,” she said, “please let me know.”

As a matter of fact, there was something she could do, he said, in a follow-up phone call. When Mariam arrived at his chambers in Detroit’s ornate federal courthouse, he outlined his plan.

Later, back in our office across the street, Mariam related what Rosen needed: $500 million from foundations. “I’ve got to get a few people on the phone,” she said.

As one of the largest of the nation’s 740 community foundations, we have a track record of thinking boldly about raising and leveraging financial resources to address problems in our region. But these were big numbers by anyone’s standards.

Yet within months, a consortium of regional and national foundations had pledged nearly $370 million to catalyze a global settlement that minimized pensioners’ losses and spared the DIA’s irreplaceable art collection from sale. The “Grand Bargain,” as the settlement came to be known, ultimately grew to be an $816 million deal, including $350 million from the state of Michigan and $100 million from the Detroit Institute of Arts and its supporters. The agreement brought together foundations, labor, the state legislature, retirees and the city’s art museum in an unprecedented way.

It’s a story about how philanthropic leaders were willing to operate far outside their foundations’ traditions and comfort zones. It is also a story of how some favorable circumstances and relationships in the philanthropic community in southeast Michigan, nurtured over many years, set the stage for this historic collaboration.

Beginning at our own organization, Mariam Noland has been at the helm of the Community Foundation since its founding - an interval in which its assets have grown from $2 million to nearly $800 million. Her relationships within the local and national philanthropic community are wide and deep.

In addition to a strong community foundation, Southeast Michigan is home to a number of national and local private foundations with strong ties to Detroit. They enjoy a strong peer network, strengthened over years of collaborating on a wide variety of efforts. These bonds solidified after 2008, when philanthropy assumed a leading role in the quest to rebuild the southeast Michigan’s economy, devastated by the mortgage foreclosure crisis and a continuing hemorrhage of jobs.

Eleven local and national foundations - including the Ford Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation - received national recognition for their support of the New Economy Initiative at the Community Foundation, a more than $130 million effort to diversify the regional economy and stimulate entrepreneurial growth in the wake of the crisis.

While no previous project approached the magnitude of what Judge Rosen was proposing, that history of collaboration and trust proved essential as Mariam attempted to mobilize the leaders of more than a dozen of the foundations in our network.

In a more than three-hour meeting at the courthouse on November 5, Judge Rosen and his team of mediators made a compelling case for foundation participation in the Grand Bargain. Skeptics might call it a bailout, but a global resolution of all the bankruptcy claims offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to end the city’s free fall, protect pensioners, permanently secure the DIA’s independence and establish the fiscal framework for a sustainable city. The alternative was a decades-long legal battle that would at the very least spell the end of Detroit’s fragile economic recovery.

Within days, Ford Foundation President Darren Walker led by committing $125 million over 15 years. “We were interested in solving the problem. And the problem required a big response,” he would tell an NPR reporter.

Negotiations — earnest, intense and conducted in court-mandated confidentiality — ensued. A legal team from the foundations worked collaboratively for many months to draft the complex grant agreements needed to address the unprecedented circumstances.

In the end, 12 foundations committed a total of $366 million over 20 years. Signing on to the historic deal were the Community Foundation, the William Davidson Foundation, the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Hudson-Webber Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the McGregor Fund, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the A. Paul and Carol C. Schaap Foundation.

Every dollar contributed by the foundations would be earmarked to support the city pension plans, allowing the city to meet most of its obligations to retirees without liquidating its art and protecting it from such sales in the future. And at the courageous urging of union leaders, city workers and retirees - the often-overlooked heroes in the saving of Detroit - overwhelmingly agreed to pension and health care cuts to support this agreement.

The agreement also created the Foundation for Detroit’s Future, a new subsidiary foundation for which our organization was chosen to be its home. Under the oversight of our organization and board of trustees, the Foundation for Detroit’s Future will manage and administer the Grand Bargain funds over 20 years.

As he approved the settlement, Bankruptcy Judge Stephen Rhodes said the result “bordered on the miraculous.” Fast Company magazine saluted the new Foundation for Detroit’s Future as the top philanthropic idea of 2014 for “saving a city and its art.”

As Detroit moves toward the second anniversary of its emergence from bankruptcy, the Grand Bargain stands as proof that in these politically polarized times, competing interests can shake off old habits and confining perspectives to move the community they share forward.

The story of the Grand Bargain also underlines the indispensable role philanthropies can assume, particularly when working together on some of the complex problems cities face in the 21st century. Thanks to their permanent endowments, foundations have the resources and agility to respond to urgent needs, as well as the staying power to implement long-term interventions.

Community foundations like ours - permanent, place-based public charities—can be conveners and facilitators of new approaches, offering local perspective as well as the force of philanthropic dollars pooled from many individuals and businesses with a stake in the region and who share an unparalleled commitment to its prosperity.

In Detroit, these organizations—trusted partners who had practiced collaborative leadership in less dramatic situations - came together and staged an unprecedented intervention. Acting in ways both extraordinary and yet consistent with their missions, they set in motion the powerful events that saved a city.

I have a few things of local note to discuss. The top of the list is the upset victory by my longtime acquaintance and fellow progressive Philly blogging compatriot Chris Rabb, who is now the Democratic nominee to represent Pennsylvania’s 200th congressional district in the state House. It’s been a rollercoaster ride for Chris. If you didn’t see it, his campaign made national news because of it’s involvement with a terrible tragedy on Sunday:

Alex Cherry chatted with Chris Rabb, a Democratic candidate for a seat in the Pennsylvania State House, on Sunday, saying he planned to work the polls in the upcoming election.

Impressed, Rabb and a volunteer encouraged the 21-year-old to join the campaign, Rabb said later in a statement.

“He was enthusiastic about the political process,” Rabb said.

Then, as Cherry was still speaking with the campaign worker, a man came up behind the 21-year-old and shot him in the head, according to Philadelphia Police.

The shooter “walked up and deliberately shot someone with every intent of killing,” said Police Commissioner Richard Ross, WPVI reported.

After shooting Cherry once, the suspect walked away for a moment and then returned to shoot Cherry twice more, according to police.

Cherry died while holding a piece of campaign literature, Rabb campaign manager Chris Visco told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the shooting. Sunday night, a friend of Alex Cherry was also shot and killed.

Police say another shooting that took place hours later may be connected to Cherry’s killing. Just blocks away, witnesses told police that someone got out of a red SUV and shot into a crowd. One of those shots hit Elijah Frazier, 18, who ran into a Chinese take-out restaurant with a fatal gunshot wound, police said.

Frazier was taken to a local hospital, where he died. A bullet also grazed the head of a 17-year-old, police said.

Both Frazier and Cherry were friends who belonged to a group that had an ongoing dispute with another group, Philadelphia’s Homicide Capt. James Clark told reporters Monday, AP reported.

There was nothing particularly unusual about these shootings–they are as regular as the rain in these neighborhoods of Philadelphia. But this is the first time, I think, someone has been shot and killed while discussing a political campaign with a candidate and a campaign volunteer.

In other news, State Rep. Mark Cohen, who is my Facebook friend but less of an acquaintance than someone whose path crosses mine from time to time, was unexpectedly defeated by a complete upstart- a community organizer named Jared Solomon. I know nothing about Solomon, but Cohen has served in the Pennsylvania House since 1974, making him the longest-serving member in Harrisburg. He’s also the son of legendary Philadelphia city councilmember David Cohen who served in that capacity in the late-1960’s and then uninterrupted from 1980 until his death in 2005. As you can imagine, this election result is pretty big news in the City of Brotherly Love and even statewide.

Another guy I’ve crossed paths with several times over the years is Dwight Evans. State Rep. Evans has been in the state House of Representatives since 1981 serving the 203rd District. He’s attempted to get a more prominent job several times, running for mayor twice, for lieutenant governor once, and also running for governor in 1994. Last night he essentially became a member of the U.S. House of Representatives by defeating Rep. Chaka Fattah in the Democratic primary. This was a blow to Rep. Bob Brady who stuck his neck out for Fattah despite the fact that Fattah is going on trial in mid-May for “racketeering, conspiracy, bribery, money laundering and bank fraud.”

It was a victory for Gov. Tom Wolf and Mayor Jim Kenney, who both endorsed Evans.

To make things a little more interesting, Dwight Evans was not pleased to see Chris Rabb win.

Evans and [former City Councilwoman Marian] Tasco are leaders of the Northwest Coalition, an alliance of African-American politicians. The fact that Evans won the primary election is significant because it solidifies the coalition’s position as one of the most powerful political factions in Philadelphia. The group also counts Councilman Derek Green and Councilwoman Cherelle Parker on its team. Today, the coalition’s official Election Day lunch spot, Relish, drew bigger crowds than Famous 4th Street Deli, the power crowd’s traditional electoral lunch hangout.

The only dark cloud on the day for the Northwest Coalition was Chris Rabb’s defeat of Tonyelle Cook-Artis in the 200th District state House race. “Obviously, I’m disappointed that she did not win,” said Evans of Cook-Artis’ loss.

Presumably, once Evans gets a little accustomed to Capitol Hill, he will worry himself much less about who serves in Harrisburg.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton came close to winning every ward in Philadelphia as part of a strong statewide victory. Clinton also dominated in the suburban ring counties of Philadelphia. In my own swing county (Chester), Clinton got 33,000 votes and Trump got about 35,000. Sighting actual Trump voters at the polls in my traditionally moderate Republican area was certainly disheartening and not a little disturbing.

The last bit of big news out of the Keystone State last night was the relatively easy victory Katie McGinty enjoyed over Joe Sestak and John Fetterman. She should probably be favored to unseat Sen. Pat Toomey, but she’s never run a successful political campaign before, so it remains to be seen how she performs on the campaign trail. If Hillary Clinton is winning Pennsylvania big at the top of the ticket, it’s going to be hard for Toomey to split off enough votes to get reelected, and the Democratic strategists believe that Clinton and McGinty will complement each other and amplify each other’s strengths and demographic appeal to suburban women who have a very low opinion of Donald Trump. McGinty was pushed by Democratic Party bigwigs who have a strained relationship with former congressman Sestak. President Obama even endorsed her, as well as Attorney General candidate Josh Shapiro, who also won.

So, overall, it was a mixed night for the Philly-area Democrats with an interesting set of winners and losers.

I wanted to share an observation about the coverage of last night’s primary election results that I watched on MSNBC. Obviously the big news was the numbers themselves, the decisive wins for both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. But a close second was their victory speeches. The contrast couldn’t have been greater.

Clinton gave the kind of address you would expect from her, or really from almost any candidate in her position. It was well constructed and delivered (and if not rhetorically sweeping, punctuated with good lines): tactically gracious to Sanders; focused on her positions on the issues that matter to different voting groups in the Democratic coalition; and with all her fire directed at the GOP as befitting a candidate who has all but locked up the nomination.

Trump was…off his narcissism meds. 80-90 percent of his obviously off-the-cuff remarks were about him, his unbelievable victories, the foolishness of all those pundits and establishment types who doubted him, how smart he is, how good he is at math, etc. Instead of trying to woo the supporters of his two remaining rivals he insulted those rivals in his alpha male way. And I could not keep up with the firehose of lies—he made billions of dollars in deals with the Chinese?

Based on my Twitter feed plenty of people saw and understood what happened. Yet—and here’s my point—the on-air talent at MSNBC barely recognized, at least directly, this reality. Instead, they plunged into an insider-y discussion about how Trump’s speech proves that Corey “Let Trump be Trump” LewandowskI has edged out Paul Manafort and about what Trump’s references to next week’s contest in Indiana say about his strategy for winning 1275 delegates. Important subjects to discuss, of course, but the studious avoidance of the insanity we’d all just witnessed was like churchgoers at coffee hour discussing the homily without mentioning that the priest delivered it buck naked.

If it were, say, CNN, or one of the networks, where the executives rightly worry about alienating conservative viewers, I could understand it. But this was frikkin liberal-left MSNBC—Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, Eugene Robinson and the rest. Maybe it’s the presence of the value-neutral Brian Williams as co-anchor, or the fact that they’ve been at this for months and are becoming house-blind to Trump’s freakishness, I don’t know. But while I very much appreciate the intelligence and professionalism of the MSNBC crew, and generally find their analysis on nights like these to be more penetrating and informative than what their CNN rivals deliver, I just found it weird that none of them thought it necessary to even note, much less discuss—though you could tell they were thinking it—the ocean-wide difference between how the two front-runners behaved in this crucial moment, how one of them is clearly a frightening lunatic, and what that means for the country.