Joe Biden has won Georgia and its 16 electoral votes. It is an extraordinary victory for Democrats who pushed to expand their electoral map through the Sun Belt. The recent win by Biden increases his Electoral College margin of victory over President Donald Trump. Point to be noted that Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election on 7th November after flipping Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin to the Democrats’ column. Now, Biden has 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. President Trump won Georgia by 5% points in 2016 over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Democrats had focused heavily on the state in 2020, seeing it in play two years after Democrat Stacey Abrams narrowly lost the governor’s race. Both of Georgia’s Senate seats were on the ballot this year, further boosting the state’s political profile as well as spending by outside groups seeking to influence voters.
Those two races are headed to a January runoff. Georgia hadn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton in 1992. On Thursday, President-elect Joe Biden said that he has decided whom to nominate as his secretary of the Treasury Department. Biden said that the announcement will come just before or after Thanksgiving and that you’ll find it is someone who I think will be accepted by all elements of the Democratic Party, progressives through the moderate coalition. The leading candidates are thought to be former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard. Either would be the first woman to serve as treasury secretary. Yellen’s name has surfaced more frequently in recent days as the potential nominee.
It is noteworthy that Yellen was also the first woman to chair the Fed, a position she held for four years. The possible candidates are former Fed vice chair Roger Ferguson and Raphael Bostic, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Both Bostic and Ferguson are Black, and either would be the first Black treasury secretary. Bostic is also the first openly gay president of a regional Fed bank. Many progressives believe Yellen was mistreated by President Donald Trump, who broke with recent precedent and declined to reappoint her as Fed chair. Yellen’s two immediate predecessors, Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan were both reappointed by Democratic presidents, after being first appointed by Republicans, as a gesture toward the nonpartisan nature of the Fed.