Ezra thinks Democrats frame the tax debate badly:
This gets to a generalized problem in Democratic tax talk, which is that they're very unwilling to talk about taxes in terms of value. There are lots of government services which are actually a good deal for middle income families and should be sold as something that Americans would be wise to invest in. But rather than making a positive case around awesome stuff we're going to get, Democrats talk about taxes in complete isolation from the things that taxes buy, and begin with the premise that they're so odious and painful that they should only be levied on folks too rich to notice. It's not exactly the strongest argumentative ground.
But every tax takes money from people; until you concede that, you cannot argue that the benefits outweigh the costs. But I agree that a saner take on taxation would be less abstract.