Maybe it’s the summer heat, but I thought I was hallucinating when I picked up Monday’s Washington Post and read the headline, “Democrats Not Shying Away from Tax Talk.”

It seems like common sense to me, but for decades Dems have shied away from the T-issue for fear of being called soft on tax increases. But it turns out that Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg has recent numbers suggesting that taxes can be a good issue for Democrats.

While voters still are likely to believe that Republicans have a more favorable position on taxes generally, they support Democratic efforts to close corporate loopholes and to make the tax system fairer.

If the issue is fairness, Democrats should have a field day. Take July 24, when the Republican’s chief tax man, Representative Bill Thomas, introduced a budget-busting tax break for corporations. (It would reduce the top rate from 35 percent to 32 percent–and add a whopping $120 billion to the deficit over the next ten years.) Compare this to the Republicans’ refusal to expand the child tax credit for low income families–a step whose ten-year cost of $3.5 billion seems paltry compared to the tax breaks being doled out to the super-rich.

In a recent survey, a majority of Americans (57 percent) say they want to move in “a significantly different direction” on the economy. What puzzles me is that Democratic stimulus programs, with few exceptions, have been uniformly tepid–focused more on targeted tax cuts than on necessary public spending.

What about the evidence that shows that voters see a more direct connection between government spending on streets, highways, bridges and school construction and the creation of jobs than the connection between tax cuts and job creation. As Jeff Madrick pointed out in a recent column in the New York Times business section, these are times that cry out for bold proposals from the Democrats. A bold–and sensible–new economic program, according to Madrick, would reject individual tax cuts and stress government spending that creates jobs.

A new program could include “adequate transfer of money to the states–as much as $100 billion. It could also include seriously financing the president’s new education bill, which has been neglected…and innovative investment in transportation infrastructure.” Given the dire state of the economy, what the nation needs is a jobs program. It might even be a winning ticket.