The Morning Dispatch: All Eyes on Georgia

Plus: Moderna’s great COVID vaccine news and a new multilateral trade deal in Asia.

The Dispatch Staff 2 hr ago

Happy Tuesday! The Chicago Bears exist purely to inflict pain on the unlucky souls foolish enough to root for their success.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • Preliminary data from Moderna Inc. show that the biotech company’s COVID-19 vaccine is 94.5 percent effective at preventing the disease. Moderna plans to apply for emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration within weeks.
  • Republicans in Washington are increasingly coming around to the reality of President-elect Joe Biden. Sens. John Cornyn, Kevin Cramer, Marco Rubio, Mike Rounds, and Jim Risch hinted at as much yesterday, and Robert O’Brien—President Trump’s own National Security Adviser—promised a “very professional transition” if Biden is determined to be the winner. “Obviously things look that way now,” O’Brien said.
  • President Trump is reportedly preparing to order the Pentagon to reduce the number of American troops in Afghanistan (from 4,500 currently to 2,500) and Iraq (3,000 to 2,500) by January 15. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell urged Trump to reconsider: “A disorganized retreat would jeopardize the track record of major successes this Administration has worked hard to compile,” he said in a statement.
  • California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that 28 counties—accounting for 94 percent of the state’s population—will be moved back into the state’s most restrictive “purple tier” of coronavirus restrictions. He characterized the move as an “emergency brake” in order to slow down the state’s rise in cases, which are currently on track to exceed the state’s summer peak.
  • Hurricane Iota made landfall in Nicaragua last night as a Category 4 storm that the National Hurricane Center called “extremely dangerous.” Iota is the second storm to batter that part of Central America in as many weeks.
  • The United States confirmed 168,784 new cases of COVID-19 yesterday per the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, with 10.4 percent of the 1,624,343 tests reported coming back positive. An additional 969 deaths were attributed to the virus on Monday, bringing the pandemic’s American death toll to 247,175. According to the COVID Tracking Project, 73,014 Americans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19.

Georgia on All Our Minds

Heading into this month’s election, just about everyone expected the Republicans to lose their Senate majority—including the people whose job it was to maintain it. One GOP strategist working on Senate races told us last month Republicans had a 15 percent chance of hanging on. “The question isn’t whether the tide is going to continue to move against us,” he said. “The question is simply, how high is the water?”

Well, Election Day came and went, and the widely predicted Blue Wave never materialized. Although Sens. Cory Gardner and Martha McSally lost their races, incumbent Republican Sens. Joni Ernst, Dan Sullivan, John Cornyn, Steve Daines, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Thom Tillis, and Susan Collins are all still standing. Thanks to Tommy Tuberville successfully picking off Sen. Doug Jones in Alabama, Republicans currently hold a slim 50-48 edge in Congress’s upper chamber; two January runoff elections in Georgia are Democrats’ last chance to make up the difference.

Georgia elections operate under a “jungle primary” system: All candidates from all parties run on the same ballot in November, and if no one is able to secure an outright majority of support, the top two vote-getters advance to a runoff. Due to longtime Sen. Johnny Isakson’s abrupt retirement in 2019, both of Georgia’s Senate seats were up for grabs this year—and in both races, no candidate exceeded 50 percent of the vote. Republican Sen. David Perdue led challenger Jon Ossoff 49.7 percent to 48 percent in one, and in the other, Democratic Rev. Raphael Warnock received 32.9 percent of the vote compared to GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s 25.9 percent and GOP Rep. Doug Collins’ 19.9 percent.

As a result, the Peach State will be the center of the political universe from now until January 5. If Ossoff and Warnock win, Democrats will (with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote) control the White House, House of Representatives, and Senate. If either Perdue or Loeffler hang on, the GOP will have a strong check on President Joe Biden.

Moderna Hits Paydirt 

Pfizer’s announcement last week that its upcoming COVID vaccine was 90 percent effective in preliminary data was an extremely bright moment in a month of mostly grim pandemic news. Yesterday, we got another equally encouraging development: Moderna, creator of another of the leading vaccine candidates, said its early data showed its drug to be 94.5 percent effective in preventing the disease. Like Pfizer, Moderna said it will ask the FDA for emergency use authorization based on that data to begin distributing their vaccine as quickly as possible.

“Since early January, we have chased this virus with the intent to protect as many people around the world as possible,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement. “All along, we have known that each day matters. This positive interim analysis from our Phase 3 study has given us the first clinical validation that our vaccine can prevent COVID-19 disease, including severe disease.”

In the wake of Pfizer’s similar announcement, it may not be immediately clear why Moderna hitting vaccine paydirt as well is so important. The first reason is the simplest: Two effective vaccines means significantly more doses getting to patients significantly more quickly. Both Pfizer and Moderna have been laying the groundwork for months (with a sizable assist from the White House’s Operation Warp Speed) to fire up industrial production of their vaccines the moment they were shown to be effective. Pfizer has said it hopes to make 50 million doses of its vaccine available globally by the end of the year; Moderna expects to have 20 million doses ready to ship in the U.S. in the same time frame.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership

After eight years of negotiations, China, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, and the 10 ASEAN member states struck an agreement to form the world’s largest free trading bloc. Dubbed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the pact notably excludes the United States and India, and signals a willingness among even our closest security allies to strengthen economic ties with China. Despite only modest changes to standing trade tariffs between member states, the deal carries symbolic weight: China’s economic and diplomatic leadership in the Asia-Pacific region is expanding while America’s wanes.

With the inclusion of 15 member states, RCEP accounts for about a third of the world’s economic activity, 30 percent of the world’s population, and a combined GDP of $26.2 trillion U.S. dollars. “It is a clear win for all signatories. What it delivers in real terms remains to be seen, of course, but it is reasonable to expect it will drive significant growth at least between some member-country pairs,” Fred Rocafort, a legal expert on China and a former diplomat, told The Dispatch. “Because of the need to accommodate widely divergent interests, the RCEP is not as far-reaching as some other trade deals, but the fact some form of agreement was reached is itself remarkable.”

Worth Your Time

  • Elise Stefanik—who for a brief time was the youngest woman ever to be elected to the House—is one of the GOP’s best-known House members. But she emerges from the Trump era a markedly different politician than she was four years ago. After initially backing John Kasich in 2016 and repeatedly calling Trump out—after his disparaging remarks about the Khan family, after the Access Hollywood tape, after his so-called Muslim ban—Stefanik found her voice defending the president vociferously during last year’s impeachment trial. And she “did not look back,” Russell Berman writes in The Atlantic. Check out Berman’s full piece for a look at one of the more interesting career trajectories in the House, and the work Stefanik has done to recruit more GOP women to the chamber.
  • On November 7, 21-year-old Chris Nikic became the first person with Down syndrome to finish the Ironman triathlon. But growing up, the odds were stacked against him. “At 5 months old, he endured open-heart surgery. He was so weak and had such poor balance that he did not walk on his own until he was 4,” writes New York Times reporter Kurt Streeter. “At every turn, experts spoke of Nikic in terms of limits instead of possibilities.” But Nikic persevered in spite of it all. “I learned that there are no limits,” he told Streeter. “Do not put a lid on me.”

Presented Without Comment

ABC News Politics @ABCPolitics

NEW: Top General Services Administration official who’s blocking Pres.-elect Joe Biden’s transition team from accessing government resources appears to be looking for a new job, according to a message obtained by @ABC News. GSA official blocking Biden’s transition appears to privately plan post-Trump careerThe president still has not conceded defeat despite Joe Biden winning 306 electoral votes to his 232 and President Obama said his refusal is a “dangerous path” for democracy.abcn.ws

November 16th 2020

2,770 Retweets

Also Presented Without Comment

Sam Levine @srl

Georgia SoS Brad Raffensperger says Sen. Lindsey Graham asked him if it would be possible to toss all mail ballots in places where there were higher rates of signature mismatch. Raffensperger said he was stunned. washingtonpost.com/politics/brad-…via @AmyEGardner

November 16th 2020

3,806 Retweets

Toeing the Company Line

  • On the most recent episode of Advisory Opinions, Sarah and David talk electoral conspiracy theories, the race-based admissions case at Harvard, the latest DACA developments, and The Mandalorian.

 

Reporting by Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey), Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Audrey Fahlberg (@FahlOutBerg), Charlotte Lawson (@charlotteUVA), James P. Sutton (@jamespsuttonsf), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).

Photo by Jessica McGowan/Getty Images.
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