The latest on the Iowa caucuses and 2024 primary campaign

US President Joe Biden’s campaign co-chair and mega-donor Jeffrey Katzenberg was upbeat and bullish in front of reporters Monday.

Katzenberg is one of several top advisers that the Biden campaign dispatched to Iowa for an afternoon news conference ahead of the Republican Iowa caucuses

As he touted the campaign’s $97 million fundraising haul last quarter and the robust cash-on-hand that the campaign entered 2024 with, Katzenberg went as far as to say that once the GOP primary – or, the “race for the MAGA base,” as he put it – had wrapped up, “it’s just going to be too late” for the eventual Republican nominee to compete with the Biden re-elect campaign.

But the battle ahead is far more complicated than those rosy talking points. Almost to a person, Biden’s senior-most campaign advisers, White House officials and other supporters and allies of the president have told CNN in recent weeks that they expect the re-election fight in the fall to be very close – and very tough.

Notably, they acknowledge that their economic message is still not breaking through. 

But at the same time, senior advisers have stressed repeatedly that even in the new calendar year, voters are not yet paying close attention to the 2024 race and that it could be a while before they do. 

In other words – yes, the campaign is fully aware of how tough the recent polls have been on Biden. But until many more voters realize that Trump is likely to be back on the ballot, prompting a reset of sorts across the country, much of what they’re seeing now is “just noise,” one senior Biden adviser insisted to CNN.