This Sunday, I watched some political malpractice take place. The ABC morning political chatfest had their usual duelling roundtable, although for some reason Rahm Emanuel was missing from the lineup. This allowed Chris Christie to demonize the idea that President Joe Biden will be proposing (officially, on Wednesday) to tax upper-income capital gains at the same rate as wage income. The two liberals on the panel just weren't a match for him, and got drawn into the weeds of the debate rather than framing it correctly for the American public. Because not once did they use the phrase: "millionaires' tax."

That's what the new tax plan would be. Plain and simple. Cut and dried. If you make less than one million dollars per year in income, then your taxes will not change at all (at least not on capital gains -- there are reportedly other parts to Biden's proposal, but none of them was even part of this discussion so they can be treated separately). Got that? Only millionaires will pay. And not just millionaires in the traditional sense of the word ("those who are worth more than a million dollars"), but annual millionaires, since the tax rate wouldn't even kick in until you make that much in one year's income (no matter what your actual overall wealth may be). That's an even smaller slice of the public than "millionaires," but the label is still a useful one. In fact, it isn't even the "one percent" -- it is instead only the top three-tenths of one percent.

This is a tax on millionaires, and Democrats should start calling it that immediately. "Don't make a million bucks a year? Don't worry, it won't apply to you." That is the easiest counterargument to make to all the Republican weeping and wailing about the poor investor class and how downtrodden and put upon they are. According to conservatives, if you tax investors too much, then at some point they will just throw up their hands and say: "I'm paying too much in taxes, therefore I will just stop making money and that will solve the problem!" No really -- that's pretty much their whole argument.

Of course, it is completely shameful that America taxes capital gains differently than other income sources. Making money is making money, after all, whether you get it in a paycheck each week or in profits when you sell some stock (that's all "capital gains" are -- profit from buying and selling things like stocks). All other sources of income are lumped together by the I.R.S. and treated the same, with the same tax rates. But this one particular way of making money -- coincidentally the same way very wealthy people make most of their money -- is taxed at roughly half the rate that a firefighter, a police officer, or a schoolteacher is taxed on their wages. To put it in as simple terms as possible: rich people pay half the income taxes everyone else does.

To his credit, Joe Biden actually admitted while campaigning for the Democratic nomination that he was in favor of taxing capital gains as all other income is taxed. I was pleasantly surprised to hear this, because it is not normally considered a centrist position. It is usually espoused by people like Senator Bernie Sanders, to put it another way. But Biden stated his intention of doing so in several debates. He is now merely following through on that promise -- again, to his credit.

Republicans are going to fight this using their usual bag of rhetorical tricks. Taxing capital gains at the exact same rate as wages will be called "socialism" and "redistribution of wealth" and (of course) a "job killer." But what they don't fully realize is that the public is actually in the mood to redistribute some of the gaping inequality in this country -- inequality that has been fed and nurtured by outrageous tax giveaways to the very top of the income heap. This has been going on for decades now, which is why the gap has grown so large.

Most people are now just fine with closing that gap a bit. And the way to convince those who might be sitting on the fence is to frame the issue so that anyone can easily understand it:

"Do you think millionaires pay too much in taxes, or too little? If we could change the taxes on millionaires without changing everyone else's taxes, would you support that? All we'd be doing is forcing them to pay the same tax rates that you now do on your wages instead of only taxing them half what you now pay-- that sounds pretty fair, doesn't it? Because that's exactly what Joe Biden is proposing with his new capital gains tax plan. Instituting a millionaires' tax, so we all pay our fair share to build America back better."

That is a winning argument. Which is why, as I said, it was absolute political malpractice not to hear that phrase being used by liberals this weekend. Hopefully, they'll rectify this unforced error immediately. Hopefully Joe Biden himself will use it in his big speech on Wednesday night, to show other Democrats how easy it is to sell this idea to the public.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant