Stephanopoulos Overstates Obama: A Lot of Blacks 'Didn't Know He Was Black'

Sometimes, a line just jumps out of a transcript. To me, this is just a Line of the Week. On Thursday's GMA, George Stephanopoulos was assessing the fallout from Sen. Joe Biden describing Barack Obama as "clean" and "articulate." In trying to explain how it helped Obama, George declared: "He was doing poorly among the African American community because a lot of them didn't know he was black."

Here's the line with more context around it:

Roberts: "But who's counting?"  But with a woman, a Hispanic, an African American in the race, is this just the beginning of a really charged race?"

 Stephanopoulos: "Oh, no question about it, Robin. Everybody is going to be on the lookout for double meanings, for coded messages. You know, in an ironic way though, this may have helped Barack Obama. One of the big problems his advisors noted is that a lot of-- He was doing poorly among the African American community because a lot of them didn't know he was black. And this has given a lot of attention to that in these first opening days and it could be a silver lining for him."