Minnesota DFL can blame Biden for their losses, but their neglect of child care cost them and us.

Now that Democrats can see Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, holding the gavel in hand, they ought to do some soul searching about what brought about this state of affairs. 

The easy answer is to blame former President Joe Biden for running for reelection despite his age and unpopularity, which dragged down Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy and Democrats across the country. (Of course, I’d question their credibility given how they insisted on backing Biden when it was clear to some of us that he was finished.)

The problem with blaming the national atmosphere on Democrats’ failure to hold the Minnesota House is that a handful of their House candidates — just enough to lose control of the House — ran behind Harris. 

Think about it: Voters in a handful of suburban districts voted for Harris and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and then did the unthinkable in these times of nationalized elections, negative partisanship and straight-ticket voting: They split their tickets and voted for Republicans in state House races, or left the House line blank. And did so despite the Democrats’ mountain of campaign cash to persuade them. 

I’m not sure how you read that result as anything other than this: Just enough voters rebuked the 2023-24 session, when Democrats were in full control and racked up a bevy of progressive legislative victories. 

I’m not condemning those legislative victories, which were mostly for the good and will pay dividends down the road. 

That said, Democrats clearly failed to persuade some key voters that DFL lawmakers understood their concerns and were ready to help. 

The most important issue was, as usual, the economy, and specifically the pandemic-era spike in prices. 

If you think about media broadly as all the external messages we take in, there could be no more devastating media to the incumbent party in 2024 than what people saw at the grocery store, where prices have risen 25% in recent years. 

In a rare bit of synergy, the political and policy solution to this state of affairs was to shove cash into the pockets of Minnesota families.

The DFL-controlled Legislature did some of this. They expanded the Working Family Credit and created a nation-leading Child Tax Credit, but these are aimed primarily at low-income Minnesotans. 

These programs help Minnesota families who badly need it, so I’m glad they were enacted.

But when it came to buying off middle class voters, Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Tim Walz fell short. They gave a small tax rebate of $520 for married couples and $260 per child. And they made school meals free for all. They also made public college free for families with an adjusted gross income less than $80,000. 

But Democrats whiffed when it came to enticing voters with a solution to a major challenge for families with young children: child care.

Walz says his overriding mission is to make Minnesota the best place to raise children, and in many ways it is, but not when it comes to finding and paying for child care. 

For many families, child care is like a second mortgage payment. Statewide, average child care center prices range from $299 per week for a preschool-aged child to $387 per week for infants, according to Child Care Aware of Minnesota. (Home-based child care is cheaper, but vanishingly rare in recent years.)

You wanna have two children close in age? Double it. 

Minnesota has among the highest child care costs in the country. 

Our family spent nearly $25,000 on child care last year, which we manage with two decent journalist salaries, but I can’t imagine how anyone does it on working-class wages.

Meanwhile, Minnesota preschool teachers are grossly underpaid while working with children during some of the most crucial moments of their cognitive and social development. 

In other words, it’s a classic market failure that cries out for government intervention.  

To be fair, the DFL trifecta did make some investments in child care, as Michelle Griffith reported in the summer of 2023. The number of subsidized slots for lower income Minnesota children increased by about 19,000, bringing the total to an estimated 55,000.

But Minnesota has over 330,000 children under age 5, and state programs have income caps, meaning the subsidized slots aren’t available for many middle class families.

The child care problem affects families across the state and knows no political party, which is why it’s been a Republican priority, as well.

Which means there’s opportunity to get something done, even though Democrats are now hemmed in by fiscal and political constraints that weren’t there in 2023. 

The perception out of this last election, fair or not, is that Democrats are out of touch with the everyday problems of too many Minnesotans. 

A bold attempt to solve the child care problem would prove otherwise.