“Hi, thanks for coming to my new weekly book club meeting here at Little Pete’s. I trust you’ve all read All The Pretty Horses? It gives me great comfort and escape during these trying times.”

How notable is Michael Nutter’s stupefying, ongoing support of Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the face of a constituency that seems to be over the moon for Barack Obama, and lingering rumors that it’s all because Dude is still salty about Obama’s support of Chaka Fattah last year? Well, for one, it’s notable enough that there’s a piece about it in today’s New York Times. The Times is asking the same questions everyone here has been asking since Nutter endorsed Clinton months and months ago, when it seemed premature and (much as it seems now) politically unwise and, given that so much of the city is obviously pro-Obama, maybe even traitorous to do so.

The Times piece doesn’t answer any of the questions any of us have been asking, and nor does it address a very possibly apocryphal story that has been circulating around political circles in Philly lately. The story suggests that the Clinton campaign bullied its way into Nutter’s endorsement — a “black market” endorsement, if you will — and it goes a little something like this:

One day last fall, The Nutter Office got a call one from the Clinton campaign headquarters, out of the blue, thanking Nutter for his support. A number of people in the office (re: everybody) were surprised to hear about it, since they were still in the process of debating which of the candidates to support. This was back when it wasn’t just Clinton v Obama, either: Edwards was still considered a serious candidate, and the rest of the crowd was still getting invited to debates and everything. So where did this come from? Some believe the call was made — if such a call was made — because a lot of the people on Nutter’s staff are friendly with the Clinton campaign from Way Back When, and a few friendly chats between staffers somehow turned into a black market endorsement, which bubbled into a full-fledged one, with rallies and fundraisers. Once the thank you call was made, Nutter didn’t really have a choice. If he backs out and Hillary won the nomination, it’d hurt him more than supporting her and then switching to Obama (if Obama wins the nomination) does. But for Nutter, though it may seem like a weird blind spot now, it could all work out in the end: He likes both Obama and Clinton, but is fighting the Clinton fight since he’s been stuck in it so long, and because both Clinton and Obama work for him.

We’re putting that in blockquotes not to attribute, but to remind you that this is merely a story that is going around. Is it plausible? Some folks say yes, some folks say hell no. But it would explain a lot, from the earliness of the endorsement to Nutter’s own teeth-gritting when asked by the Times why he’s not backing Obama:

“He’s a really nice guy who’s talking about really important issues,” Mr. Nutter said last week while sitting over a late dinner of grilled cheese and chocolate milk at his favorite diner, Little Pete’s, “and I am aware that he is African-American.” Mr. Nutter’s wit is dry almost to the point of brittle.

But what the theory doesn’t answer is the ongoing Heidi/Spencer/Lauren-ness of it all, how personal it seems to have gotten, and how, if the endrosement was indeed a strong-armed one, why Nutter is now the go-to guy when you need a quote from a black guy who likes Hillary. Frankly, to us, either way, it all seems completely crazy: Nutter’s entire candidacy flew on the premise that he could exist outside of the traditional Democratic Party Machine, and to think that he’s currently sucked into it, doing its bidding, is distressing indeed. And you don’t even need a conspiracy theory to see that.

[Photo credit: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times]

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 11:37 am.