Rival bets Biden will run for president

Presidential hopeful Lincoln Chafee is predicting that Vice President Biden will launch a bid for the White House.

“I think he’s going to get in,” Chafee, a former Rhode Island governor and long-shot candidate for the Democratic nomination, said during an interview with Larry King on his Ora.tv show “PoliticKING.”

{mosads}”I see him standing with President Obama in every photo. Especially the big main profile [photos] — when the Supreme Court ruled in favor the Affordable Care Act, the deal with Iran, the opening of Cuba — it always seems the vice president is standing right there,” Chafee said.

“That seems to signal something to me.”

Biden visited Colorado and California this week for a series of speeches on the economy, part of his ramped up schedule in the weeks following the death of his eldest son, Beau, 46, to brain cancer. 

Speculation that Biden will enter the race and challenge Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, has ticked up in the past few weeks, starting with a report that his two sons had urged him to run. 

Two more reports in the past couple weeks have suggested that Biden is still mulling a bid, though a spokesperson has repeatedly said that such speculation “is premature and inappropriate.”

“He’s run before — he ran in 1988 and of course in 2008,” said Chafee, who was a senator before being elected governor.

“And I served with him on the Foreign Relations Committee, we’ve traveled together to Iraq and done some trips together to Mexico. I’ll put my two dollars that he gets in,” he added.

Clinton holds a major lead against Democratic rivals including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb and Chafee.

However, a recent poll suggested that Biden could tighten the race, should he announce a bid.