How This Site Works

1. This Report Card project was initiated when then-Senator Barack Hussein Obama II announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States of America on February 10, 2007. Senator Obama picked Senator Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. to be his running mate on August 22, 2008. Singularly and together, they made innumerable promises to the American voter, regardless of his/her political affiliation. This project limited the number of Obama-Biden promises researched to 600, a manageable number.

2. This Report Card is a tool for students majoring in political science, high school students studying government, and regular folks interested in learning how promises made to earn their votes were either fulfilled or broken. Thus, this research project reflects how a 'man or woman on the street' views Obama-Biden Administration performance based on the information publicly available to the American taxpayer.

4. This site is non-partisan, unbiased, fact-based and objective. Personal views or political affiliation did not affect the results of this Report Card. It is an aid to remaining abreast of the Obama-Biden Administration's performance, tied to the specific wording of promises made.

5. Like the report card children bring home through high school in which the completion of assignments factors heavily in final subject grades, each campaign promise made by President Obama and Vice President Biden is treated as an 'assignment' under a general subject category filed under "Departments" or "Other/Miscellaneous." General subject categories have several sub-categories. The numerical results of all the sub-category "assignments" feed into the Grade Point Average (GPA) for the general category. For example, on the home page, click on the "Agriculture" button. On the drop-down menu that appears, click on "View All." Scroll to the bottom of the page. At the far right under the "Grade" column, you will see the GPA for promises related to Agriculture. In the book version, simply go to the last page of the "Agriculture" chapter for the GPA. The final GPA is converted to a letter/alpha score that is reflected on the Home Page of the Internet version, seen as page 1 of this book. The average of all category/subject grades is reflected in the "Overall Grade" (C), top right of the Internet Home Page/page 1 of this book.

6. The following color codes were assigned to different letter/alpha grades simply for visual effect:

a. GPA of 0.87 to 1.00 = Blue (for grades of A and A-)
b. GPA of 0.66 to 0.86 = Green (for grades of B+, B and B-)
c. GPA of 0.35 to 0.65 = Yellow (for grades of C+, C and C-)
d. GPA of 0.14 to 0.34 = Orange (for grades of D+, D and D-)
e. GPA of 0.00 to 0.13 = Red (for grades of F+ and F)

7. Here's how the GPA numerical averages were converted to home page letter/alpha grades:

a. 0.94 to 1.00 = A.......... 0.87 to 0.93 = A-
b. 0.80 to 0.86 = B+........ 0.73 to 0.79 = B.......... 0.66 to 0.72 = B-
c. 0.59 to 0.65 = C+.........0.42 to 0.58 = C.......... 0.35 to 0.41 = C-
d. 0.28 to 0.34 = D+........ 0.21 to 0.27 = D.......... 0.14 to 0.20 = D-
e. 0.07 to 0.13 = F+.........0.00 to 0.06 = F

For this project the overall average of all 20 GPAs was 47%, which translates to a yellow "C" button.

8. Links to source documents 'come and go' whereby a reliable web site available today may not be accessible anywhere tomorrow. This was problematic especially for promises accessible in their original form from one source only and that source no longer hosts the document in question. In such cases, the original title and date of the document has been retained on the off chance that it will resurface somewhere in open source documents in the future. In some cases, well-known sites such as "Politifact" were the only sources wherein the exact wording of promises could be confirmed as having been present in otherwise deleted source documents. Citing such sources was the extent of the influence those sources had on the conclusions attained during research of a particular promise.

9. By being reelected in 2012, President Obama got four more years to deliver on promises he did not fulfill during his first 2009-2012 term in office. To ensure continuity, this site remained focused on promises made that led to his first election, considering that promises made for his second election were largely duplications of those made during the campaign for the first election.

10. Comments/feedback on this website or any of its promises may be addressed via e-mail to jbci1@aol.com. Please ensure that the promise number (i.e. AG-1) is reflected in any communications. Corrections/clarifications to this web site may be posted as soon as they are researched and validated. Corrections/clarifications to the book version of this web site may be published as warranted.

Enjoy!

The Author,
John E. Beaulieu
June 9, 2021