President Obama has a very complicated argument to make as he works to sell his plan for higher taxes on top earners.

Calling for higher taxes on anyone in an election year during a fresh economic slowdown is tough. Obama and his campaign may be having some success in stoking resentment at the rich in general and Republican Mitt Romney specifically, but when Democrats talk about raising taxes, voters get anxious. It reinforces the most unpopular part of the blue team’s brand: tax-and-spend liberalism, a label that could prove toxic to Obama’s re-election hopes.

The president has tried to soften the blow in his current push for higher taxes by saying that he wants to give a $2,000 tax break to middle-class families next year.

But there is no tax cut. Rather, Obama is offering the one-year delay of a tax increase on middle-income households from current rates, some more than a decade old. If your boss said he was considering cutting your pay to its rate in 2001, but then relented, you wouldn’t call it a raise...