WASHINGTON – These are heady days for President Joe Biden. The midterm elections offered long-sought validation. Democrats held onto the Senate, and even if they lose the House, it will be by a narrow margin. The Republicans are in retreat and, by the way, so are the Russians and, just a bit at least, so is inflation.

The president’s fellow Democrats are flocking to cameras to give him credit.

“This victory belongs to Joe Biden,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, his one-time rival, said on NBC’s Meet The Press on Sunday. His advisers sound almost giddy, using words like “miracle” and “biblical” to describe the election.

But even as the history-defying midterms went a long way toward solving some of the president’s immediate political problems, they did not miraculously make him any younger.

A week from Sunday, Mr Biden, the oldest president in US history, will turn 80, a milestone the White House has no plans to celebrate with fireworks or splashy parties. And so Mr Biden confronts a choice that still leaves many in his party quietly uncomfortable: Should he run for a second term?

Top advisers such as Mr Ron Klain, Ms Anita Dunn, Mr Mike Donilon, Mr Steven J. Ricchetti and Ms Jennifer O’Malley Dillon are already meeting to map out what a 2024 campaign would look like.

The president said last week that he “intends” to run, but would talk with his family over the holidays and announce a decision early next year. He will only be more motivated assuming former President Donald Trump jumps into the race on Tuesday night as expected.

Mr Biden likes to remind anyone who will listen that he is the only one who has beaten Mr Trump, and he remains confident that he is the Democrat who is best equipped to do it again.

Polls show that as unpopular as Mr Biden remains, he still has more support than Mr Trump does and the Republican setbacks last week have undercut the former president in his own party.

“Even before the midterms, Biden was running ahead of Donald Trump,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen. “Now you’ve got Biden, he has the wind behind his back, he’s got a lift from doing better than expected, while Trump is obviously part of a Republican Party meltdown. When you look at it in that frame, Biden has emerged in a stronger position.”

Unspoken is the reality that Democrats have an unproven bench behind Mr Biden. Many party operatives are deeply worried that Vice President Kamala Harris could not win. While there are many other would-be contenders, none of them has impressed the president enough for him to feel comfortable turning the party over to them.

Some Democrats argue that this is a situation of Mr Biden’s own making, having failed to successfully groom a potential successor, consciously or not making himself the indispensable man. But either way, it leaves many Democrats circling back to the conclusion that Mr Biden remains the party’s best choice.

“Boy, he literally had the Democratic Party across the country at every level, state, local, congressional, it had the best midterms of any Democratic president since JFK,” said Senator Chris Coons, a Democratic ally from Delaware, the president’s home state. “It’d be hard not to look at that and say, ‘OK, there’s still a role, there’s still a path, there’s still important things to do.’ ”

The elections, however, were as much a testament to Republican weakness as an indication of Mr Biden’s strength. According to an aggregate of surveys tracked by the political website FiveThirtyEight, Mr Biden’s average 41.5 per cent approval rating remains lower at this point in his term than that of all 13 presidents at similar points going back to Mr Harry Truman (albeit only slightly lower than Trump’s was at this stage).

One House Democrat who won reelection last week said the party’s success should not be viewed as a validation of the president. Mr Biden’s numbers were “a huge drag” on Democratic candidates, who won in spite of the president not thanks to him, the lawmaker said on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the White House.

RootsAction.org, a left-leaning advocacy group that supported Senator Bernie Sanders, the socialist independent from Vermont, in the 2016 and 2020 primaries, barely waited until the polling booths closed Tuesday before kicking off a “Don’t Run Joe” campaign to pressure the president to step aside.

Mr Norman Solomon, the group’s national director, noted that Democrats won with higher numbers than Mr Biden’s approval ratings, meaning they outperformed their leader.

In CNN exit polls, 67 per cent of voters last week said they did not want Mr Biden to run for reelection, including a significant share of Democrats. A New York Times/Siena College poll in July found that nearly two-thirds of Democrats preferred another candidate for 2024, with age listed as the top concern by the most party members.

While past presidents marked major birthdays with lavish spectacles – Mr Bill Clinton celebrated his 50th with 20,000 supporters at Radio City Music Hall; Mr Barack Obama partied on his 50th with Tom Hanks, Stevie Wonder and Jay-Z – Mr Biden has not made similar plans for next Sunday, when he becomes an octogenarian.

Aides said they had not intentionally avoided a public display, but simply had not had time given the midterms and the president’s current trip overseas.

Mr Biden has said age is a legitimate factor for voters to consider, while maintaining that he is in great shape.

Despite occasional verbal stumbles, he has made a point of showcasing his stamina by following a stretch of cross-country campaign travel with an arduous weeklong journey to North Africa and Asia. While four years younger, Trump faced plenty of questions about age-related diminishment while in office.

Mr Biden’s aides respond to questions about age by citing his record: Look at all the bills he has passed, they argue, because that shows he can get the job done.

Among others, Mr Biden enacted major legislation providing Covid-19 relief; rebuilding the nation’s roads, bridges and other infrastructure; jump-starting the semiconductor industry; expanding health care; extending help to veterans afflicted by toxic burn pits; curbing the price of prescription drugs and combating climate change.

None of which, of course, guarantees how he would be doing in six years, at the end of a second term, when he would be 86 – nine years older than Mr Ronald Reagan, the previous oldest president, was when he left the White House at 77.

The midterm success gives Mr Biden space to decide on his own terms. If he runs again, he is likely to have stronger party support than if there had been a Republican wave.

Barring a surprise, it is harder to imagine a significant challenge emerging for the nomination. If he does not run, he can bow out with his pride intact rather than looking as if he was forced to step aside by a bad election.

An announcement may not come until the State of the Union address, probably in February.

Aides argue they do not need to move any sooner since Mr Biden is an incumbent, and besides, if he does not run, he would prefer to delay the day he becomes a lame duck. Should he not run, it would still leave nearly a year for other Democrats to prove themselves on the campaign trail.

But in the exuberance after last week’s elections, many Democrats are betting on Mr Biden giving it another go.

“He just defied midterm political history, ” said Mr Cornell Belcher, who was Obama’s pollster. “My God, what president in the last two decades has been better positioned?” NYTIMES