IOWA CITY — He doesn’t talk about shattering glass ceilings. Pantsuits aren’t really his style. And no one is talking much about his spouse.

Even so, the opening days of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s third presidential campaign are giving some Democrats flashbacks to another presidential front-runner: Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Biden’s first fund-raiser? Hosted by a Philadelphia-area donor who did the same for Mrs. Clinton four years ago. His early policies? Embraced by Democrats, including Mrs. Clinton, for years. A decades-long record in Washington? Mrs. Clinton had a similarly lengthy résumé. And a tortured, drawn-out apology as the first controversy of his campaign? Remember her private email account, former Clinton aides shudder.

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As he ramps up his presidential campaign, Mr. Biden appears to have taken some lessons from Mrs. Clinton’s defeat — but paid no heed to others. Even as he structures his campaign around an implicit critique of her general election effort, offering a full-throated appeal to working-class voters at his opening event in a Pittsburgh union hall, Mr. Biden has embraced the kind of incumbent-like, establishment campaign that left Mrs. Clinton open to a fierce primary challenge from Senator Bernie Sanders.