Roger...apologies...
Let’s start again.
When the journalist boldly states “If he were white, he once bluntly noted,” it indicates the journalist has a high degree of certainty. A journalist cannot know this could be of super relevance in the future, and journalists do not go quoting all the time. They write stories. If he were clairvoyant Jeff Zeleny would have quoted Obama... and then again, maybe not.
It does indicate Zeleny has this information somewhere.
It does indicate a very, very high degree of confidence Obama said this.
It does allow a political opponent to take the senator to the mat, even as this article is written. If the NY Times can run with former aides to McCain “thinking he might have had an affair”, and scored a Front Page story, this could do likewise. (LOL; not holding my breath though).
It does mean someone may have to do the last inches of legwork, but that quote from Jeff Zeleny’s article indicates the Obama Team has stepped in it pretty good once again.
I don’t think you need the precise quote, just the line from the journalist and let HIM defend it... if he is wrong.
I have an inkling he didn’t misquote or misrepresent Obama, just by the confidence with which he framed the paragraph.
Agreed, you might be able to start a NYT-style smear campaign with this (never mind that the smear is probably actually true and that the campaign probably wouldn’t be very successful because it’s against a Dem instead of a Republication, but I digress).
Yeah, journalists write stories. And unfortunately, that’s all this will be — a story — unless a specific, exact quote surfaces. You’ll need to do a 1:1 match. We have Ferraro’s exact words. We need Obama’s exact words also. It can’t just be some obscure 2005 reference from one particular journalist (and no others, at least not that I can find by Googling), making a non-specific claim that Obama said something, without having proof of the exact words that Obama said.