Biden seems poised to continue his deliberations for several more weeks - and possibly into early November - leaving precious little time to launch a bid and get on the ballot in key early primary states. Prominent donors are being courted, and senior strategists with ties to President Barack Obama's past campaigns are in conversation with Biden's team.
The continued indecision has made it all but certain the vice president will not take part in the first Democratic debate on Oct. 13 in Las Vegas, leaving the stage to the top two competitors, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and several others.
At times, Biden sounds far from ready. But then there are moments like Thursday night, when Biden sprinkled his remarks to a Manhattan crowd with comments that sounded like someone with a keen interest in running.
He made a reference to the many miles he has traveled as vice president - now clocking in at more than Clinton did as secretary of state. He also drew an ideological contrast with Sanders, who has generated enthusiasm on the left with his populist economic agenda.
"I'm not Bernie Sanders," Biden said. "He's a great guy, he really is. But I'm not a populist, I'm a realist," he said at the Concordia Summit.
When Biden talks like that, it feeds speculation that he is getting ready to join the race, and there is plenty of activity around him to suggest that he is overseeing a campaign in the making.
And yet, there is a parallel universe of greater significance, the single factor that no one can overcome, which is that Biden's family is still grieving the loss of his son, Beau, who died of brain cancer four months ago at age 46. The vice president has repeatedly said that no decision about running for president can be made until his family is ready to commit, even if it means that the moment passes.
"It's just not quite there yet and it might not get there in time to make it feasible to run and succeed because there are certain windows that will close. If that's it, that's it. It's not like I can rush it," Biden said in an interview with "America," a leading Jesuit news site, just before Pope Francis arrived in Washington last week.
Some Biden loyalists have been counseling against the delayed approach because it could give Clinton time to recover from self-inflicted wounds her campaign has suffered over the continued fallout of investigations into her use of a private e-mail server while serving as secretary of state.
Nine days after the debate, Clinton is scheduled to appear before a House committee established to investigate what happened in Benghazi, Libya, in September 2012, when four Americans were killed. Democrats began to rally around Clinton this week after remarks by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) touted that the investigation had hurt her politically, prompting leading Democrats to call the investigation solely a political exercise.
Even though he is not expected at the Las Vegas debate, Biden will share a forum with Clinton this weekend. He will deliver the keynote address Saturday at the Human Rights Campaign's annual dinner in Washington. Clinton will speak to the gay rights group earlier in the day.
Biden's decision-making process continues along two separate tracks, as it has over the past several months. The first is a methodical effort by a small team of advisers to survey the political landscape and the second is Biden's internal family deliberations.
With every week that passes, Biden and his political team believe they are more ready than ever to launch a campaign. But with every week that passes, Biden is that much closer to the point of no return - when it would be too late to mount a credible campaign.
Critical states such as New Hampshire, Texas and Florida have filing deadlines that start in November and December, requiring campaign staff on the ground to assemble voter signatures.
That sets up a particularly tense October. The vice president has already blown through previous decision-making timelines, beginning with the end of August or early September dates that advisers suggested in the spring, before the public knew that Beau Biden's brain cancer had a recurrence.
By late summer, Biden's camp clarified that the end of summer - officially Sept. 23 - was a more likely drop-dead point, only to float Oct. 1 in recent weeks because that would still allow him to be on stage at the Oct. 13 debate. On Thursday, officials at CNN, the host of the Las Vegas event, reported that Biden is not expected to participate.
Those close to Biden suggest the debate would be high risk for him. Despite his shoot-from-the-hip image, Biden is meticulous with debate preparations. For his 2012 vice presidential debate against Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Biden logged 100 hours of preparation, including 60 hours that had been completed a full month before the encounter.
Instead of debate prep, Biden has devoted recent weeks to his vice-presidential duties. Last week, his schedule was consumed with the papal visit and the state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Earlier this week, he spent a day in New York in a round of meetings with foreign leaders attending the United Nations General Assembly, and he returned there Thursday for a pair of events devoted to diplomacy.
Next Thursday he delivers remarks at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on infrastructure funding to boost the economy, which some loyalists believe could be the hallmark of a campaign theme.
The now-lengthy deliberation has given Biden's advisers plenty of time to make a thorough assessment of the political landscape, identify available talent and scope out prospects for raising enough money. Biden's team is confident that he could raise $30 million or so to get through the first round of primaries and caucuses.
They have identified people willing to help staff a campaign, both those with past associations with Biden and many who were involved in President Obama's 2008 or 2012 campaigns.
No firm offers have been made to prospective staffers, but Biden loyalists have a good sense of who they would try to slot into the key jobs. And as one person with ties to the Obama political network, though not in direct conversation with Biden's team, put it: "There's a lot of talent available.'
The Associated Press reported Thursday that two Obama campaign veterans - Paul Tewes, who ran the successful Iowa caucus campaign in 2008 that was a key to winning the nomination, a field expert, and Marie Harf, now the State Department spokeswoman - were in talks to work on the potential Biden campaign.
Those close to Biden make no bold predictions of victory in what would be a potentially fierce contest against Clinton and Sanders. Nor are they making their calculations based on the belief that Clinton has been so weakened during the first months of her candidacy that she would be easy to defeat. Their calculations are based, instead, on the assumption that she would be a formidable opponent.
As much as he says he is not ready to make the decision, Biden has dangled hope to his supporters who view his son's loss as a rallying cry, frequently recalling his own father's admonition to "just get up" when life knocked him down.
"That's what Beau wants us to do. That's what Beau expects his father to do," Biden told the Jesuit news site. "So we're just getting up and moving on."
