Does Kansas Rep. Sharice Davids think Biden should step aside? Here’s what she said
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After casting their final votes for the week, Thursday morning, Democratic lawmakers streamed from the House chamber and into the muggy July heat to travel back to their districts for the weekend.
They were met by a wall of political reporters, most of whom have been asking some version of the same question for the past week: Do you think President Joe Biden needs to step down as Democratic nominee?
Rep. Sharice Davids, a Kansas Democrat, hasn’t answered it. On Thursday, she left the chamber, went outside and leaned on a car window to chat with a fellow lawmaker. Asked by a reporter where she stood, Davids pleasantly referred back to a statement her campaign had issued.
“I was elected to Congress to deliver results for Kansans and am focused on what matters most to folks at home, like lowering everyday costs, protecting reproductive rights, making health care more affordable, and ensuring all Kansas families have the resources to succeed,” the statement said.
It has been two weeks since Biden’s weak debate performance against former President Donald Trump. In the time since, he has given speeches at rallies, sought to reassure donors, sat down with a reporter and, on Thursday evening, will hold a press conference. He has wholeheartedly said he will stay in the race through November and he will beat Trump.
Some Democrats are not convinced. Over the past week, there has been a steady trickle of donors, advisors and elected officials proclaiming that Biden should not run. Biden allies are suggesting he still has time to drop out.
Among the loudest voices questioning Biden are so-called Democratic frontliners – the group of House members the Democratic Party thinks are the most vulnerable in November.
Some have openly said they believe Trump will win in November. Others have issued statements calling for Biden to step aside.
Amid that chaos – multiple meetings, discussions on the House floor, open letters circulating behind closed doors – Davids, who is also a frontliner, has chosen to remain silent.
A change in approach
The morning after the debate, Davids sought to redirect the attention on Biden’s age to refocus it on Trump – who made false claims in the debate about the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, his environmental record and even claimed that “everyone” wanted the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“While Rep. Davids is focused on helping Kansas families, what we saw last night is that Donald Trump is still focused on spreading lies and extreme measures to rip away reproductive health care for millions of Americans,” said Zac Donley, her spokesman.
Davids was able to successfully win reelection in 2022 by making abortion the centerpiece of her campaign – tapping into voters galvanized by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
But she also kept an unpopular Biden at an arm’s length – portraying herself as a moderate willing to stand up to Biden on issues like his student loan debt relief plan.
Already, Republicans are criticizing Davids for staying silent on whether Biden should remain the nominee.
“We’re approaching a week since Joe Biden’s disastrous debate that snowballed into Democrats calling for Biden to resign… yet Sharice Davids has stayed silent,” Delanie Bomar, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said. “Running for office means answering tough questions, so Kansas voters deserve to know: Does Sharice Davids still think Biden is fit to serve?”
It’s likely the NRCC will criticize Davids regardless of what she says about Biden. The group has issued boilerplate criticism of Democrats who call for Biden to step down, saying they are participating in a “transparent election-year ploy” to keep their seats.
The steady discontent among Democrats, who are concerned that Biden won’t be fit to serve another four years in office, has become a “small storm,” according to Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City Democrat.
Cleaver is backing Biden, alongside the Congressional Black Caucus. But while Cleaver said he was going to get “Democratic diapers” for his colleagues who were worried about Biden’s chances after the debate, on Wednesday he said the situation had turned into a little storm.
Cleaver said he still believes Biden should be the candidate. But he stressed that it’s in part because he believes the decision to step down as nominee is up to Biden and that congressional Democrats don’t have much of a say.
In the meantime, he said, he’s concerned about the “storm” of Democrats coming out against Biden.
“Democrats are going to keep on having these conversations with one another ad nauseam until it becomes a tsunami,” Cleaver said. “If it becomes a tsunami, then people will start speaking openly and candidly. Right now you know it’s a storm, it’s a little storm. But it can become a very dangerous storm.”
