Trump keeps trying to kill Obamacare. The problem? Voters love health care.

For Donald Trump, every old grievance is new again as he seeks another term as president.

And nothing sticks in his craw quite like Obamacare, also known as The Affordable Care Act, signed into law in 2010 by and nicknamed after the former president, Barack Obama, who mercilessly mocked Trump's political ambitions back in 2011.

Obama still lives so rent-free in the former real estate developer's head that Trump has repeatedly mentioned him in campaign rallies while attempting to criticize President Joe Biden, who has been the country's actual president since he defeated Trump in 2020 and took office in 2021.

Trump has it coming, of course, after years of pushing the racist lie that America's only Black president wasn't really born in this country. Biden is reminding voters of that now with a new campaign radio ad playing on stations with large Black audiences in swing states.

Obamacare, now as before, represents everything Trump really cares about – branding and revenge – and everything that drives him crazy – disregard and defeat.

Trump knows Obamacare has grown in popularity

Trump faces a familiar set of linked problems in his repeal-and-replace redux effort for Obamacare. The program is remarkably popular with voters, except Republicans. That means Trump's renewed push to kill the law plays only to his existing base at a time when any presumptive Republican nominee should be trying to broaden their coalition with Democrats and independents.

A poll released May 15 by KFF, a nonpartisan health policy nonprofit formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that 62% of registered voters had a favorable opinion about Obamacare while 37% did not.

Break that down by party and 90% of registered Democrats and 62% of independents support Obamacare while 68% of Republicans oppose it.

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Obamacare is popular across all age groups for eligible votes, though the younger you are, the more likely you are think favorably about it. By age groups, the support is 70% for those ages 18-29, 62% for ages 65 and up, 60% for ages 30-49 and 58% for 50- to 64-year-olds.

Women, at 65%, are a bit more likely to support Obamacare then men, at 60%.

And it is popular across racial lines, with 84% support from Black respondents, 71% from Hispanics and 55% from white Americans.

Trump can't stop complaining about the failed Republican effort to kill Obamacare while offering zero solutions

Trump resumed his attacks on Obamacare long before he swept away Republican competitors in the presidential primaries. He complained on his social media site Truth Social in November that some Republicans in the Senate turned their back on his effort to kill the program in a 2017 vote while he was president.

That included the late Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who didn't think much of Trump (or Obamacare).

Trump also derided Obamacare during a December campaign rally in Reno, Nevada, where he called it "a catastrophe for American families" and named McCain for thwarting him, calling the 2017 vote "a bad day."

Trump took to Truth Social last month, posting a video claiming he's "not running to terminate" Obamacare, accusing Biden of falsely claiming that. Instead, Trump claimed he wants to make the program "much better, stronger and far less expensive."

The video was long on political attacks and short on pertinent details. That has always been Trump's repeal-and-replace approach to Obamacare, focused all on the "repeal" without ever offering an explanation for what he would "replace" it with.

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Trump's attempt to frame Obamacare as part of illegal immigration

Trump's latest attack on Obamacare uses a not-so-slick sleight of hand, attempting to pair it with his irrational rhetoric about immigration and the crisis along America's southern border.

Biden announced on May 3 that his administration would allow about 100,000 people enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to apply for Obamacare. The "Dreamers" of DACA, a program launched when Obama was president in 2012, is open to people who were brought to America as undocumented children younger than 16.

People in this program, many of whom are Latino, must be enrolled in school, have graduated high school or obtained a GED, and have no convictions for felonies or three or more misdemeanors. The point of DACA was always to give people living in America who didn't have a choice about coming here a shot at a productive life.

Trump tried to frame Biden opening Obamacare to Dreamers in a May 3 campaign statement as "handouts for illegal immigrants," suggesting it was somehow unfair to Black and Hispanic voters.

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He followed up on that during a May 11 campaign rally on the beach in Wildwood, New Jersey, where he claimed he would "rescue our health care system from Joe Biden's migrant invasion."

The truth is that Biden's plan allows people who have enrolled in a government program and are leading productive lives to pay for health insurance.

This is an opportunity for Biden

Trump's obsession with Obamacare is an exploitable weakness, and Biden looks to make the most of it. Biden's campaign earlier this month started airing a new television ad, spending $14 million in swing states to note that Trump still wants to "terminate" Obamacare.

He followed that with a pair of May 15 radio interviews with stations in Atlanta and Milwaukee with large Black audiences, stressing in both that Trump still wants to kill off Obamacare.

Biden has seen his support slip with some Black voters feeling less enthusiastic about him and some Hispanic voters giving Trump a look.

Trump attacking Obamacare, signed into law when Biden was vice president and famously captured by a microphone calling it "a big f------- deal," feels like an inadvertent political gift that Biden certainly won't refuse.

Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump wants to kill Obamacare out of revenge. But what about voters?