“We Should Extend Our Hand to Wall Street, Rather Than a Fist”

That has gotta be the most hilarious campaign slogan EVER. The candidate who uttered it lost yesterday’s primary, so this clueless phrase probably won’t go down in history. After all, who remembers what Michael Dukakis said as he was going down in flames? Or Robert Dole in 1996, or thousands of other losing candidates.

Reshma Saujani has worked for three hedge funds, and thought she could muster up enough financial backing from Wall Street mucky-mucks to unseat incumbent Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D—NY). Didn’t happen.

As this article says, Reshma Saujani had positioned herself as “the only candidate who understands how stressful and difficult the past few years have been for some of the wealthiest people in America.”

Oh Thank God — somebody finally understands their plight. Don’t you just hate it when the servant brings in the wrong caviar? Oh, the Agony! As I said to the butler yesterday…

She received more than $800,000 in campaign contributions, mostly from Wall Street. Last July she spoke at a private gathering of several dozen Wall Street VIPs. She said:

“We need to extend a hand rather than a fist” to Wall Street. “In New York, it's complicated because 35 percent of our revenue comes from the financial services industry…we can't make it so difficult to do business here that people will vote with their feet.”

It’s the Oligarchy’s favorite scare tactic again. “Businesses will leave if” this law gets passed. If one employer actually left every time the Right shouted “businesses will leave!” the United States wouldn’t have one single employed person left. And voters keep falling for that shit.

But not yesterday.