​Neera Tanden to serve as Hillary Clinton’s transition co-chair​

WASHINGTON (Diya TV) — Hillary Clinton’s White House transition team is coming into picture, a mixture of former advisers to President Barack Obama, close confidants, long-time colleagues and former elected officials will round out the fold. Named on Tuesday, the group will seek to lay the groundwork for the Democratic presidential nominee to take control of matters quickly if elected.

The multitude of season and experience of the selected is evidence of Clinton’s long experience in Washington as a former First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State.

Traditionally, transition teams aim to help the president-elect make key decisions during the period between the election and inauguration, in this case, from Nov. 8 through Jan. 20. “They are the names you would expect – people who have been advising her for a long time; people who have worked with her for a long time and people who are peers, who she respects,” Matt Bennett of the moderate Democratic group Third Way said of Clinton’s transition team.

The group will be headed by Ken Salazar, a former interior secretary and U.S. senator. He will marshall a group of four co-chairs: former Obama national security adviser Tom Donilon; former Obama aide Neera Tanden, who now leads the progressive think tank the Center for American Progress; former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and Maggie Williams, the director of Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

Heather Boushey will serve as the group’s chief economist — she previously worked as the executive director of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Two policy advisers from Clinton’s campaign — Ed Meier and Ann O’Leary — will also assume full-time roles in the transition team, the campaign said in a statement.

“The job here is to give options, not just say there is one policy course you want to take,” said Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who advised the presidential campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry.

Clinton would become the first woman elected to the U.S. presidency if she wins November’s general election, and Shrum said because of that, her team “has got to be the first transition team in history where the majority of its members are women.”

He added that Clinton has largely followed the same theme and template used by Obama during his preparation after the 2008 election.

Tanden, who played an instrumental role in shaping Obama’s healthcare overhaul, is a member of Clinton’s tight-nit group of friends, and has also worked for her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Williams was the 1992 transition director for Clinton when she became first lady, and then her chief of staff in the White House. Clinton and Donilon worked closely when she led the State Department from 2009 through 2013. Granholm, the former governor, is also a former state attorney general and has years of experience in Democratic politics.

The announcement of the transition team comes at the same time Clinton has experienced another jump in the opinion polls, with the current RealClearPolitics average of national polls showing her 6.7 points ahead, at 47.7 percent to Trump’s 41 percent.

Trump’s campaign has struggled to gain momentum after a series of controversial remarks were made by the Republican nominee since formally winning his party’s nomination last month.