Midday open thread

• IN:02: This guy found his natural political home.

  Tony Zirkle, who is seeking the Republican nomination in Indiana's 2nd District, stood in front of a painting of Hitler, next to people wearing swastika armbands and with a swastika flag in the background for the speech to the American National Socialist Workers Party in Chicago on Sunday.

  "I'll speak before any group that invites me," Zirkle said Monday. "I've spoken on an African-American radio station in Atlanta." [...]

  Zirkle said he did not know much about the neo-Nazi group and that his intention was to talk on his concern about "the targeting of young white women and for pornography and prostitution." [...]

  The event was not the first time Zirkle has raised controversy on race issues. In March, Zirkle raised the idea of segregating races in separate states. Zirkle said Tuesday he's not advocating segregation, but said desegregation has been a failure.

  This dude ran against the then incumbent Republican Rep. Chris Chocola and -- get this -- got 30 percent of the vote. Crazy racist loon running as a Republican? Not that newsworthy. 30 percent of Republicans voting for him? That's pretty darn scary.

• Charlie Cook:

  The good news for Hillary Rodham Clinton is that she’s winning a lot of battles. The bad news is that the war is pretty much lost [...]

  At the end of the day, the popular vote for the Democratic nomination means nothing. I doubt that having won the popular vote in the 2000 general election is of much solace to Al Gore. Many a football team gains more yards than its opponent in a game yet loses on that important technicality called points.

  The Clinton folks shouldn’t be faulted for the arguments they are making: In the big states that will determine the final outcome in November, she has done better than Obama, and she holds on to downscale white voters better than her opponent does. Beyond the fact that both assertions are true, I’d make the same arguments if I were in Clinton’s shoes, as would most of Obama’s strategists if they were working for Clinton.

  But you can’t change how the game is played once it has begun. The Democrats have decided that the nominee will be determined by the number of delegates won, not by the popular vote, and that primaries held in direct violation of party rules (in this case, Florida’s and Michigan’s) don’t count. End of discussion.

• The Rezko trial hits Rove:

  In the midst of a corruption trial that has provided plenty of fodder for political cynics, prosecutors alleged that political insiders in Washington and Illinois claimed to be working to choke off a criminal investigation launched by U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald.

  At the trial of Antoin "Tony" Rezko, prosecutors revealed Wednesday that former Rezko confidant Ali Ata was prepared to testify that Rezko told him in November 2004 of a plan to pull strings with then- White House political director Karl Rove and have Fitzgerald fired.

  Prosecutors also sought to add the testimony of another admitted schemer suggesting that two of the state's most powerful Republican operatives wanted to take the heat off Rezko by dumping the hard-charging prosecutor.

  Rove denied the allegations, as did the two Republicans, GOP National Committeeman Robert Kjellander and Springfield power broker William Cellini.

• Lots of focus on blogs on Capitol Hill.

  The four congressional leadership offices now all employ full-time staffers who serve as liaisons to the political blogging world and help their party’s lawmakers stay in touch with the ever-growing online activist community.

  I have to say, things have definitely changed in the last couple of years. Not just in the level of respect and credibility we're afforded. Rather, the leadership offices used to send everyone everything they had on their plate. So I'd get a mountain of emails about crap that I didn't care about. As bloggers, we've all slotted into our favorite niches. And even on big group sites like Daily Kos, what interests me is different than what interests any of the 15 editors.

  Reid’s Director of Internet Communications, Murshed Zaheed, does not rely on a master list of blogs to get his boss’s message out. Instead, he has a number of "must read" blogs and Web sites that he follows each day.

  When a particular issue or narrative catches his attention, he’ll then reach out accordingly. Zaheed also conducts blogger conference calls based around specific issues, with the conversations being on-the-record, unless otherwise specified

  This better targeting of their outreach efforts make them far more effective for them, and us.

• OH-18: Republicans have failed to score a top-tier opponent for freshman Dem Zack Space.

  The typically strong conservative leanings of 18th District voters — President Bush took 57 percent of the vote there when he ran for re-election in 2004 — had Space perched precariously near the top of the GOP’s target list when this election cycle began.

  But the Republicans still are struggling to recover from the damage done by the downfall of once-popular Republican Rep. Bob Ney, who dropped his bid for a seventh House term well into the 2006 campaign and then pled guilty to federal corruption charges related to his ties to convicted influencing-peddling lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

  Furthermore, the Republican nominated in the March 4 primary to challenge Space — Fred Dailey, a former state agriculture director — has a relatively low political profile, and a dangerously low amount of money in his campaign treasury. Updated campaign finance reports that both candidates recently filed with the Federal Election Commission show Dailey had just $36,000 left in his campaign account when April began, compared to the nearly $1 million in cash on hand reported by Space.

  That is one of the most lopsided fundraising margins among the 30 districts that Democrats wrested from Republican control in the 2006 election. Ohio’s 18th has multiple media markets, and it is a difficult district to traverse and build name identification.

  CQ has upgraded Space's chances from "Lean Democrat" to "Democrat Favored".

• Dean takes on McCain over NC ad:

  "This is a test of leadership for John McCain. If he can't pick up the phone and make members of his own party stop airing a television ad he claims to oppose, how can he lead our country through an economic crisis or the war in Iraq?" Dean said in a statement just emailed over by the DNC. "If he is serious, he will get this ad pulled."