Vice President Joe Biden told a crowd at an Atlanta synagogue last week he was still evaluating his family’s emotional readiness for a third presidential run — and that “there’s no way to put a timetable on that.”
But ready or not, key dates loom for Biden if he hopes to wrest support from current Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and have a chance at securing his party’s nomination.
Originally, Biden said he would announce his intentions by the end of the summer: months later than other Democrats running for president, but well ahead of the campaign trail mileposts that will begin appearing this fall.
His associates now say the end-of-summer deadline is likely to slip by without an announcement as the vice president continues to wrestle with the late-May death of his eldest son, Beau.
The official end of summer — Sept. 23 — also falls on a busy week for the White House, with visits from Pope Francis and Chinese President Xi Jinping both on the schedule. As a key foreign policy hand, and the highest-ranking Catholic in the U.S. government, Biden is expected to play a role in both events — and is unlikely to overshadow them with a campaign decision.
Instead, a decision by Oct. 1 is more likely, according to people familiar with the vice president’s decision-making. But even that date could slide as the vice president and his family continue to assess their “emotional energy” for what would undoubtedly be a grueling campaign.
The unpredictable nature of this year’s race — illustrated by the surge in support for outside candidates like Sanders and Donald Trump — has led some Biden advisers to believe a late entry wouldn’t be as detrimental as conventional wisdom might suggest.
“As time goes on there appears to be a bigger and bigger space in the Democratic primary for him to step into,” said one Biden adviser, speaking anonymously to describe the thinking within Biden’s circle.
The first Democratic primary debate, a CNN-sponsored forum in Nevada, falls on Oct. 13 — an important venue for Biden to introduce himself as a presidential contender to a national audience.
But while considered unlikely, even that could slip by without a decision from the vice president. The Democratic Party has committed to three other debates before the first ballots are even cast in the nominating contest, leaving Biden later opportunities to square off with rivals before voters must make a choice.
On Oct. 22, Clinton is set to testify before the Select Committee on Benghazi on Capitol Hill, where Republicans are expected to pepper the former secretary of state about her role in the 2012 attack in Libya, as well as her use of a private email while acting as the nation’s top diplomat.
While Biden’s political advisers insist his decision will have little to do with Clinton’s performance as a candidate — and instead on his own capacity for a run — a shaky performance during her testimony would only ramp up Democratic jitters about her candidacy.
There are hard-and-fast filing deadlines that Biden must abide by in order to appear on the ballot in key early voting states, though in some cases they have yet to be firmly established. In New Hampshire, the deadline to file for the first-in-the-nation primary typically falls toward the end of October, though the date this year hasn’t been announced.
In South Carolina, where Biden’s supporters say he has the best chance of slowing any momentum by Clinton or Sanders, Biden would need to file his candidacy by early December.
An analysis by the Brookings Institution found the number of potential delegates forfeited by waiting to declare until after December was substantial: if Biden missed filing deadlines through the end of December, he wouldn’t be eligible for more than 1,500 potential delegates — more than half of the 2,232 necessary to clinch the Democratic nomination.
In reality, Democratic operatives say Biden doesn’t have until the filing deadlines to make a decision, noting the time required to build a campaign infrastructure and raise the millions needed to operate a feasible bid.
“It’s awfully late. You talk to people in Iowa, it seems early, but it’s awfully late to begin the kind of organization it takes to win the Iowa caucuses,” said David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama and a CNN senior political commentator.
“Barack Obama was a dynamic candidate, but if we hadn’t started organizing Iowa in March of 2007, he wouldn’t have won the Iowa caucuses,” Axelrod said. “Biden has no organization in Iowa today.”