If you like trivia, you’ll love Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Washington Wire:

“The Mountain State is used to picking winners. Every nominee has carried the state’s primary since 1976, and no Democrat has won the White House without winning West Virginia since 1916,” the campaign said in a memo.

Hillary Clinton’s Ohio victory speech:

“You know, they call Ohio a bellwether state. It’s a battleground state. It’s a state that knows how to pick a president.  And no candidate in recent history, Democrat or Republican, has won the White House without winning the Ohio primary.”

Of course, don’t tell Barack Obama any of this…

Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton turned up the rhetoric Saturday in their increasingly heated primary battle as she issued a new debate challenge and he complained of a race that’s largely been reduced to trivia while working families feel economic pain.

Hey, Obama, we like trivia! Hillary: keep ‘em comin’!

The Washington Post reminds us today:

Gerald Ford bit into a tamale without husking it while campaigning on the Mexican border in 1976, and he extolled its deliciousness before realizing he had consumed the wrapper.

it was a great moment in campaign history … well at least in Jerry Ford history. When Ford died in December 2006, the Houston Chronicle provided this tidy recounting of what happened:

It was called the “Great Tamales Incident” because President Gerald Ford committed a no-no by picking up a plate of tamales during an April 1976 visit to the Alamo and started to bite into one still shuck-wrapped.

Then-Mayor Lila Cockrell, who was at the brief tour of the Alamo, said most people gulped when they saw Ford eating one of the tamales with the husk.

“I think he just picked up the plate because if someone had given him the plate, the tamales would not have had the shucks,” Cockrell said. “The president didn’t know any better. It was obvious he didn’t get a briefing on the eating of tamales.”

Of course, Jimmy Carter beat Ford in 1976.  When asked afterward about lessons learned, Ford replied, “Always shuck your tamales.”

Alas, the embarrassment took place decades before YouTube would have captured and hermetically sealed it forever.  At least we do have this photo:

Think Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton beating each up over identity politics is a rare occurrence for Democrats?

Think again.

The passing of Ohio Democratic Senator Howard Metzenbaum immediately brings us back to November 16, 1981, when the U.S. Senate voted to endorse programs of voluntary prayer and meditation in the public schools by barring the Justice Department from using federal funds to interfere with this matter.  At one point during debate,  Democratic Sen. Ernest Hollings (SC) called Metzenbaum the “Senator from B’nai B’rith.”

Oy!
You might enjoy what Hollings had to say about that incident in 2004, just before he retired:

Let me emphasize another thing because the papers are piling on and bringing up again a little difference of opinion I had on the Senate floor with Senator Metzenbaum. It was not really a difference. We were discussing a matter, and we referred to each’s religion in order to make sure there would not be any misunderstanding or tempers flaring. The distinguished Senator from North Carolina, Mr. Helms, referred to himself as the Baptist lay leader, Senator Danforth as the Episcopal priest. I referred to myself as the Lutheran Senator. And when Senator Metzenbaum came on the floor, I referred to him as the Senator from B’nai B’rith, and he took exception. He thought it was an aspersion. I told him: Wait a minute, I will gladly identify myself as the Senator from B’nai B’rith. I did not mean to hurt his feelings. I apologized at that time but not for the legitimacy and the circumstances of the particular reference.

And to think, all that occurred before Gerry Ferraro was Walter Mondale’s running-mate.

John McCain wins the Republican nomination.  Mike Huckabee doesn’t.

And the big loser?

Iowa.

Huckabee joins the sad long list of Republican candidates who win Iowa in contested elections — but don’t win the White House (except George W. Bush in 2000).

That list:

2008 — Mike Huckabee

1996 — Bob Dole

1988 — Bob Dole

1980 — George H.W. Bush

1976 — Gerald Ford

John McCain may be on to something by doing so lousy in the Hawkeye State.

And it’s equally abysmal on the Democratic side.  If he wins the presidency in November, Barack Obama would become the first Democrat ever to win the Iowa caucuses and the White House in the same year (”uncommitted” beat Jimmy Carter in 1976).

With the end of Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign, it’s time to bid good riddance to the most over-worked easy headline in American political history: The Clash’s “Rudie Can’t Fail.”

Before turning our attention to The Clash’s far superior “The Guns Of Brixton” — clearly an homage to Ron Paul — let’s consider this fabulous fact from colleague Patrick Ottenhoff, the lovely and talented creator of The Electoral Map blog:

Some presidential trivia for the day — With Rudy out of the race, no New York City mayor for the last 140 years has been elected to another office after leaving City Hall.

America is poised to elect its first sitting U.S. Senator as president since John F. Kennedy in 1960.

Kennedy has been in the news a lot lately because of Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton.

We’ll know on Super Tuesday how much of a difference that endorsement made.

Until then, it’s worth noting some additional Kennedy symbolism.

Ted Kennedy, the third-longest serving U.S. Senator ever, endorsed freshman Obama at American University.  Turns out, AU holds an important place in Kennedy lore.  It was at AU that John Kennedy gave his famous June 10, 1963 commencement address, otherwise known as the nuclear test ban treaty speech: “As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity.”

The question Feb. 5 will answer: Can Camelot — and American University — still inspire greatness?

Reuters:

Under an idea floated by the administration, the 10 percent income-tax bracket would be temporarily eliminated and Americans would get the money back in the form of a rebate. Individuals would receive one-time rebates of up to $800 and families would get checks of up to $1,600.

Extreme Mortman senior historian Richard Andrews notes Bush’s $800 proposal — and remembers something quite similar from George McGovern in 1972.

Time magazine, Oct. 30, 1972:

By talking during the primary campaign of giving what his advisers called a $1,000 “demogrant” to everybody—even though the proposal was meant to replace some existing welfare programs— McGovern excited the social reformers, who are a minority in America, while deeply offending multitudes who thought it contradictory to the work ethic.

Repubogrants, anyone?

Peter Roff sends in this most excellent trivia question and answer:

Between Teddy Roosevelt and Bill Clinton, 17 men occupied the Oval Office in the 20th Century.

Question: During this period, 1904 to 1996, were more of them elected from West of the Mississippi or East of it?

Answer: It’s a trick question.  The number is eight from the East (TR, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, FDR, Kennedy & Carter) and eight from the West (Hoover [California, not Iowa]; Truman, Eisenhower [who claimed Mamie’s home state of Colorado the first time he ran]; LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton.  Ford, the tied-breaker, was never elected president.

Poor Pat Buchanan.  Don’t show him today’s Washington Post.  According to the chart on page A11 of past results from New Hampshire primaries, George Bush got 100% of the 1992 Republican vote.  With no opposition.

That should come as news to Mr. Buchanan, who, according to the Post’s David Broder as recently as August 2007, “embarrassed” Bush with 37% of the vote to Bush’s 53%.

Bye bye Buchanan brigades — erased from history.

Sure, New Hampshire’s the big story today.  Which makes this the perfect opportunity to reflect on who might have been elected New York Senator in 1976 — Howard Cosell.  (Extreme Cosell?)

We pick up the story with the New York Observer’s Steve Kornacki writing last year about Hillary Clinton:

There’s also the power of her celebrity, which hurts her as much as it helps. In that sense, Mrs. Clinton is a latter-day Howard Cosell, whose bombastic omnipresence once rendered him—simultaneously—the most revered and reviled man in America. (Mr. Cosell actually toyed with entering politics—in 1976, when the New York Senate seat now occupied by Mrs. Clinton came open—but backed out after deciding that he’d rubbed too many people the wrong way to garner 50-percent-plus-one in an election.)

And if he were alive today, Cosell might be saying this about Barack Obama: He…may …go…all…the…way.