I put that question to Twitter after seeing today’s new Quinnipiac poll and a wiseguy tweeted back, “Labor Day, of course.”

I dunno. You really think it’ll take another two months to catch her at this rate?

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is gaining ground on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Iowa Democratic Caucus and now trails the front-runner 52 – 33 percent among likely Democratic Caucus participants, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Vice President Joseph Biden has 7 percent.

This compares to a 60 – 15 percent Clinton lead over Sanders in a May 7 survey of likely Democratic caucus-goers by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University…

“Secretary Hillary Clinton should not be biting her fingernails over her situation in the Iowa caucus, but her lead is slipping and Sen. Bernie Sanders is making progress against her. Her 52 percent score among likely caucus-goers is still OK, but this is the first time she has been below 60 percent in Quinnipiac University’s Iowa survey,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

He’s already within 12 points of her in New Hampshire in three of the last four polls taken there. RCP’s Sean Trende, upon seeing the new Iowa numbers this morning, tweeted that he never expected an elderly hard-left fringe candidate like Sanders to float much higher than 10 percent against the Clinton juggernaut. Yet here we are, with huge crowds turning out for him in Wisconsin and mysterious men now poring through the Sanders archives at the University of Vermont. Honestly, I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t catch her in New Hampshire, where he’s a better match for voters ideologically and geographically, by mid-August.

You know who I bet is watching this with growing interest? Not Elizabeth Warren; she’d be in by now if she was going to run. I’m thinking of … Diamond Joe.

When deciding whether to run for office, Vice President Joe Biden has made it a practice to seek his family’s counsel. That advice has included at least two members of his immediate family—his sons—urging him to run for president in 2016, Biden friends and advisers say…

Dick Harpootlian, a former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, had coffee with Mr. Biden at the White House in May, just days before Beau Biden’s death at 46 from brain cancer. They talked through the possibility of launching a campaign, Mr. Harpootlian said. “It’s no secret that Beau wanted him to run,” he said. “If he does what Beau wanted him to do, he’ll run.”

James Smith, a Democratic state representative in South Carolina, said that in a conversation in the last two weeks, Hunter Biden reiterated that he wanted his father to jump in the race. “He feels strongly about his dad running and serving,” Mr. Smith said.

Family encouragement might mean even more to Biden now than it did before given the tragic death of his son. One question, though: Is he really the guy to capitalize on left-wing antipathy to Hillary? The lesson of Berniemania is that there’s still a huge pool of Democrats left over from 2008 who don’t want Clinton 2.0. And why would they? She’s shady, she lacks Bill’s charisma, and she’s widely perceived as a consummate status-quo politician. Her supposed electability is the only thing going for her. If there were another Obama-esque Democrat out there, young and exciting on the stump, she’d probably already be trailing in the polls. If lefties are in the market for an anti-establishmentarian, though, why on earth would they gravitate towards Biden, another mainstream Democrat who’s perceived as too often unpresidentially goofy? He’s got more of a common touch than Hillary does but then so does every other Democratic pol in America, and he lacks her potential to turn out women for the first woman president. He’s not an ideological warrior like Warren or Sanders and his candidacy would be seen, much more so than even Hillary’s, as a third term for Obama. A Hillary/Biden race, I think, would become a pure question for most Dems of which candidate is more electable next year, and the answer to that is “probably Hillary.” In fact, Biden was included in today’s Quinnipiac poll even though he hasn’t said he’s running; he topped out at seven percent despite being a sitting VP who’s campaigned nationally in the last two presidential cycles. If you want to throw a scare into Hillary that broadcasts her weakness, an ideologue like Sanders might be your best bet. Even though, realistically, he has no chance of beating her for the nomination.