The Obama administration decreed on Wednesday that health insurance plans that don’t meet the costly standards of Obamacare can still be sold through October 2016.

It’s an extension of the president’s unilateral declaration late last year that health plans millions of people were forced out of by the “Affordable” Care Act could, instead, live on for a little while. He was making up for having told the lie of the year. Now those plans will live on past this fall’s elections. Then, long after the votes are counted, the people who chose those plans and liked them will get dumped, unless the president is feeling generous again.

To be clear, letting people keep their insurance isn’t bad. One embittered left-wing website was baffled that I faulted the president for delaying a mandate he never should have imposed. They do not seem to get that if the president realizes his signature law doesn’t work, he should ask Congress to fix it. We are perfectly willing to do so. Our constitution does not permit him to rewrite laws as he pleases, but that is what he is doing anyhow.

But that website's confusion is a minor complaint. By comparison, what a huge blow the president’s decree must have been to his supporters.

Up until last October, they insisted that Americans would love Obamacare once it rolled out. As that rollout failed through the succeeding months, they had to insist that its dysfunctions were just minor “glitches.” When millions of people lost the health plans they chose and liked, the president scoffed that these were “cut-rate” plans from “bad apple” insurers peddling “substandard” coverage and that people should be glad to be thrown off of them.

Now? The bad-apple plans are perfectly fine to our president up through Oct. 1, 2016. They’ll go back to being cut-rate and terrible on Oct. 2, 2016, it seems – unless the president sees political advantage in changing his story again. So much for the "fierce urgency of now." His administration openly admits this shift was all about saving vulnerable Democrats in Congress from voters’ wrath. As The Hill reported, the administration’s announcement “singled out 13 Democrats” who helped craft the delay. The Wall Street Journal put it this way:

“If you doubt this political motivation, HHS distributed a backgrounder to reporters noting that the new rule was ‘developed in close consultation with members of Congress.’ The fact sheet mentions Senators by name, ‘including but not limited to’ Ms. Landrieu, Mr. Udall, Mark Warner of Virginia and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, plus nine House Democrats. Supposedly nonpartisan agencies like HHS are usually more subtle.”

Consider what message the president’s supporters can take from this. They regarded Obamacare as a monumental achievement. They believed that once Americans try it, they’ll love it. But after five months of trying it, Americans are increasingly saying it is hurting them more than it helps. The program is so repulsive that President Obama himself has delayed it for fear that Americans will throw out Democrats whom they see supporting it. His greatest achievement is becoming political poison.

Maybe this will help the president and his supporters learn some humility about the limits of their power.