It is clear that President Obama inflicted massive damage on his personal credibility among most Americans with his three false promises on Obamacare: you can keep your health insurance plan if you like it, you can keep your doctor if you want to, and you will save $2,500 a year. Only about a third of respondents to the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal survey give him “high marks for being honest and straightforward.” As Democratic pollster Fred Yang explained: “Make no mistake, the president has been weighed down by one issue: his health care law.”

But Obama is not the only one to blame for the Obamacare nightmare. As Politico reported in 2009, it was the Herndon Alliance that came up with the idea of promising people they could keep their insurance plans and doctors so they wouldn’t feel threatened by Obamacare. The Herndon Alliance is a Democratic messaging strategy group that leads a coalition of liberal advocacy groups. According to Politico, “When President Barack Obama says Americans can maintain their ‘choice’ of doctors and insurance plans, he is using a Herndon strategy for wringing fear out of a system overhaul.”