Arguing over labels is a red herring. Is it a hike? Maybe. Who cares? Many reasonable people might say it's a hike, so don't hide from that or try and split hairs. At the end of the day it's the right thing to do... so do it, even if it's a hike.
There's framing debates and there's Bill Clinton arguing about the meaning of the word 'is'. Sometimes you got to know when you're doing the former and when you're tilting at windmills. I also think the right's perceived advantage here is heavily overstated.
The Bill Clinton "is" thing is a bit like the hot coffee lawsuit: When you look at the details, it's quite a bit less silly then the news made it seem
The Paula Jones lawyers deposed Clinton earlier with a ridiculous definition of sexual relations, the judged chopped it down way too far, and Clinton didn't answer one more bit then he had to because they kept leaking shit, and no one answers more than they have to in a deposition.
All that said, yes, there is a point where definition of a word doesn't really matter. So yes, I agree with you, George Bush hiked the taxes on Jan 1 2013 on the upper class due to a expiration clause on a tax bill, and the Republicans opted not to renew the payroll tax holiday Obama got in exchange for a 2 year extention of the Bush Tax Cuts. They did not agree to extend these cuts when he did not agree to continued extensions of the Bush tax cuts for the highest wage income earners.
I understand and am sympathetic to Clinton but in the eyes of the public he lost and looked silly.
There's two battles progressives (and I am one) can fight here and getting sidetracked into the fight over framing this as a hike or not is not a battle they are going to win. OTOH while there was bipartisan support for letting the payroll tax holiday expire, Obama had proposed extending it for another year and bargained it away to Republicans. So if the GOP wants to call it a hike let them and remind everyone that they wanted this hike more than the Democrats did. That's a battle that's far more winnable.