Joe Biden’s 2016 path gets trickier by the day, but people who’ve been through presidential campaigns can still see it — provided they squint hard enough and nearly everything goes his way.

If he decides to run, he’ll have to count on a unique campaign landing exactly right in what’s already proved a weird cycle.


He'll also have to hope that the argument being made by his advisers is correct: that 2016 is the Joe Biden election, with an electorate desperately yearning for the authenticity that’s always been his brand and searching for the middle-class values that no one else running strikes quite like he does. And, critically, that voters will think he’s the man who can unite the Democratic Party, and the country.

People who’ve spoken to him about running say he believes all that could fall into place. But to win a presidential race — and to start by winning the nomination in a field that already has a strong front-runner and an alternative lighting up the lefty base — he will also have to pull off an almost perfectly executed campaign. With just over three months until the Iowa caucuses, there's no time for error or stumbling.

“I don’t think the Biden campaign has to follow traditional rules; he’s coming at this in a very nontraditional way,” said Simon Rosenberg, founder of the New Democrat Network and a longtime Democratic strategist who worked on Bill Clinton’s 1992 race. “He’s going to feel his way through this as he’s been feeling his way past the last few months.”

“If there’s one person who could climb that mountain and could come out on top, it is Joe Biden,” said Democratic consultant Joe Trippi. “It’s at least conceivable. How? It ain’t going to be easy.”

Here’s POLITICO’s list of six big hurdles Biden needs to clear to make a White House run take off.



A message that resonates — that’s not about Clinton

Biden would be getting into the race as the credible alternative to Clinton. He would, in many ways, be a direct challenge to her weaknesses, with electoral strength drawn from his ability to connect with voters and a feeling that he generates in people that they’re getting the authentic, not consultant-concocted, version of him. He won’t have to go on "Saturday Night Live" to prove how loose he can be.

But his campaign, strategists say, would have to make people believe right away that Clinton is not the reason he’s getting in the race.

“He has to have a message,” said Bob Shrum, a veteran of numerous presidential campaigns and John Kerry’s top 2004 strategist.

“It has to be rooted in who he is — and once it’s rooted in who he is, it can be about the voters: from the middle class, for the middle class," said Shrum, who thinks a Biden run would be uphill, but very possible.

For all that he’d counter Clinton with, she would have some easy responses. She’s old, but he’s older; she’s been around Washington and national politics forever, he’s been around Washington and national politics even longer.

Part of what Biden would have to overcome, said Bob Kerrey, a former Senate colleague and a candidate in the 1992 race, is that his record is so similar to Clinton’s and that Bernie Sanders has already put a claim on being the candidate of inspiration on the issues.

“They’re not going to doubt his competency, they’re not going to doubt his likability,” Kerrey said. “But he’s got to provide a compelling reason for people to say, ‘I’m going to pick you first.’”



Immediate momentum

There’s no time for a ramp-up. For Biden’s campaign to seem like more than a lark, he’d have to count on an immediate surge in the polls, analysts agree, leapfrogging Sanders and cutting into Clinton’s support right away.

“There’s not a natural opening for him in the poll numbers that we’re looking at nationally and in places like Iowa and New Hampshire,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth Poll — which showed Biden losing support since September in a new survey released on Monday. “While a lot of voters welcome him to the race, it’s not clear that he would be able to steal the kind of support that he needs, because voters appear to be happy with Clinton and Sanders as their two choices.”

Most agree he’d get some bump just from getting in, but it would have to be about more than just the numbers, people considering the prospect agree. Starting with a kickoff rally, he’d have to show that he can draw the kind of numbers and enthusiasm that have become commonplace for Sanders. From the start, the campaign would have to become a movement, with big crowds demonstrating his appeal across demographics and elements of the party: overflow crowds of union members and people of every color, young and old and lots of women to counter any pushback from Clinton allies that Biden is standing in the way of history.

Success begets success, and in politics, there’s nothing like momentum. He and everyone else will know right away whether that’s there.

“He has to be within 5 points of Clinton in order to send a clear signal,” Murray said. “He’s likely, if he jumped in, to still be about 10, 12 points behind Clinton, and that’s not enough right now.”

Trippi, who ran Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign, said that the question comes down to how Barack Obama barely beat Clinton in 2008: by winning the white progressives and crushing Clinton among African-Americans.

“If Bernie Sanders is winning every white progressive within the party, are you, Joe Biden, with your record on stuff, going to actually be able to get those people to come to you? That’s a problem. I don’t think so,” Trippi said. “He’s Barack Obama’s vice president. Can that get her to 60-40 with African-Americans? But can he get to 80-20?”



Campaign cash by the bucketful

What fuels all of it is money, and lots of it. Every trip Biden takes would require a paid ride on Air Force 2. Between that and advance staff that’s required when the vice president goes anywhere, each campaign stop could run to the tens of thousands of dollars. Then there’s campaign staff and rent. Then there’s money to pay for television advertising, campaign signs, website design. A super PAC can cover some costs, but as Rick Perry and Scott Walker learned, they can't do the whole job.

Biden would need to start putting millions in the bank by the end of the month. Combined, Clinton and Sanders have $60 million on hand. Biden would be starting with $0.

“Don’t overlook how critical it will be to get high-level fundraising and field staff on immediately, because his name ID is already very high and there will be a natural moment of excitement if he announces,” said Brent Colburn, communications director for the 2012 Obama-Biden campaign. “But he’s going to need the infrastructure to capture that energy and turn it into resources, volunteers and votes.”

Kerrey said that’s the part leaving him a little bewildered as he thinks about a late entry.

“How in God’s name do you raise the kind of money you need today to manage a campaign? It’s four or five orders of magnitude greater than it was the last time he ran in 2008,” Kerrey said.

“My wife said to me: 'He can just take Amtrak,'” Shrum said. “I think you can get to Iowa that way; it would just take a while.”



A super PAC superstar

A well-funded campaign is one thing. A well-funded super PAC is a different animal entirely.

While Sanders has pledged to not associate his campaign with any of the big-money groups, Biden has made no such promises, and many professional Democrats think he would likely need at least one big-time donor to go all-in if he wants to get such an operation off the ground. The good part for him, potentially, is that there are some people with big checkbooks eager for someone other than Clinton and devoted to Biden.

While Clinton has a handful of tycoons who have pledged her millions of dollars — the primary pro-Clinton super PAC raised $40 million from January to mid-September — Biden’s mogul support is still hypothetical.

So he would likely need a major check of well more than $1 million from one of the potential marchers whose names have been circulated — Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos, hedge fund manager Jim Chanos, LGBT rights activist Scott Miller and his husband, entrepreneur Tim Gill — in order to go toe to toe with Clinton.

If that kind of cash doesn’t flow in, the vice president would run the risk of having his bid overwhelmed by ads he simply wouldn’t be able to combat.



A full-scale, professional staff

Biden would find himself at a staffing disadvantage, since he has no political operation in place while both Clinton and Sanders have full-scale teams up and running. Clinton, in particular, has hundreds of aides on her payroll already.

In order to run a competitive, nationwide race that incorporates top-to-bottom fundraising, a media and messaging strategy, field organization, travel planning, policy work and political tactics, the vice president would need to immediately hire a host of professional Democrats who are either willing to jump ship from another campaign or, more realistically, to reel in some pros who were planning to sit out 2016. For donors, Democratic poobahs and reporters gauging how serious a campaign this is, the kind of people who come to work on a campaign would be a major indicator.

The calendar makes this difficult, said a handful of Democrats, and that’s not just because so many political hands are already signed on with Biden’s opponents: It’s because unless Biden looks like a front-runner, his campaign could be short-lived.

“There’s a lot of talent out there that’s sitting this cycle out, and it could be a challenge to get people to join up knowing there’s only a three-month runway,” Colburn said.



A presidential blessing

No one thinks Obama will go so far as to endorse his vice president over his former secretary of state. But if someone close to Obama were to take that step, it might serve as a flashing signal to insiders and donors that Biden has the White House's blessing. That could instantly turn the vice president into a real contender.

Obama's inner circle is extremely tight, making such backing tough to secure. Such an endorsement would likely have to come from one of the president's long-term strategists like David Axelrod or David Plouffe, whose imprimatur would indicate a level of legitimacy that gives Biden "serious candidate" status.

If Biden doesn’t get such a nod, he could run into negative headlines that question why his boss and colleagues won’t side with him, especially as two of his fellow Cabinet members — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Housing Secretary Julian Castro — have already come out for Clinton.

“There’s only a small inner circle of people who could be seen as Obama proxies,” explained Colburn, detailing Biden’s conundrum. “And in many ways, Biden himself would be the type of person you could look to for that role."

Still, this kind of surrogate nod couldn't guarantee success. Trippi said it would be only a matter of time before someone said directly to the president, “Dude, Hillary and the vice president: Who are you for?”

If Biden’s running, a squirmy answer probably won’t work for anyone. And even if it’s somehow firmer, Trippi argued the Democratic Party has changed so much since 2008, it might not push him over the edge.

“I’m not sure if Obama said ‘Vote for Joe,'" Trippi said, “that would be enough.”