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While ABC focused on Hillary Rodham Clinton's efforts to round up superdelegates, NBC and CBS looked at Barack Obama. NBC chose a charming backgrounder on Obama at age six in Jakarta. Ian Williams found Indonesian playmates of the boy then called Barry: "He towered over classmates who remembered him as a happy-go-luck child…playing barefoot in the paddy fields with a real sense of adventure." CBS' Dean Reynolds studied Obama's formal criticism of sermons preached by the Rev Jeremiah Wright, whose Trinity United Church of Christ Obama attends, and whose turn of phrase was for the title of Obama's book The Audacity of Hope. Reynolds ran a pair of soundbites whose sentiments Obama has repudiated: first Wright declared that God damns America when it kills innocent people; second he insisted that black people have "to work twice as hard just to get accepted by the rich white folk who run everything." Obama described himself as pained and angered: "I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country."
So does Obama believe that the United States has God's blessing when it kills the innocent? And does he think that African-Americans have no need to overachieve to gain social acceptance from the white majority?
As for ABC, Jake Tapper piece on Rodham Clinton's wining and dining of uncommitted superdelegates served as a set-up for a clip from substitute anchor George Stephanopoulos' interview with Speaker Nancy Pelosi on This Week. Pelosi emphasized that key role of the primaries and caucuses: "If the votes of the superdelegates overturn what happened in the elections it would be harmful to the Democratic Party."
