Why are Democrats letting the other side define the tax debate?

WASHINGTON—In any athletic contest, winning teams play their own game and force the other side to play that game too. The same being true in elections, it's remarkable how timidity leads Democrats to fight this year's campaign on Republican terms.

Nowhere is this more obvious than on taxes, where the entire debate revolves around what to do about the cuts enacted under George W. Bush. Almost no one is talking about extending the progressive tax cuts that were included in President Obama's stimulus program. Nor are we discussing the impending death of a pro-work public assistance program that, for a rather modest sum, has helped provide jobs to 250,000 low-income Americans.

At least on the Bush tax cuts, Obama has drawn a clear and sensible line. He's said that Congress should extend the reductions for the middle class but not those for families earning more than $250,000 a year.

For the life of me, I don't get why some Democrats are so afraid of this vote. Substantively, most of the 31 House Democrats who signed a letter last week urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to chicken out of this fight claim to be deficit hawks. Why then add $700 billion to the deficit for the purpose of continuing a tax program that disproportionately benefits millionaires?

And politically, why shouldn't Democrats dare Republicans to vote against extending middle-class tax cuts and then have to explain that they opposed them because not enough money was going to the rich?