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.
We will agree to disagree.
But, I also bet the journalist, and perhaps others have the quote(s) in their notes.
Then again, after the Scooter Libby trial, we learned some journalists have poor memories and notes.