The Gaming Den

I seem to be always stuck on the fact of the mascot choice. People come to me and tell me and tell me that the dems are the champions of poor man, defenders of the farmers, yada yada. But while I may not be the strongest in my history lessons, if I can get to a library or pointed/reminded of a good resource, I can research like none other.

So can anybody tell me why the choices of the two parties is an Eddie Murphy voice acting role and a pachyderm?

Addendum: According to the DNC, "Although the Democrats have never officially adopted the donkey as a party symbol, we have used various donkey designs on publications over the years."

source for addendum - http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/06/history_of_the.php

The donkey originally represented the fact that Andrew Jackson was an uneducated hick. He used the symbol as a symbol of his refusal to give up and to fire up his base of uneducated hicks. It was revived later by a political cartoonist for Harper's Weekly and caught on.

The elephant was used by this same guy twice, and he was apparently such an awesome cartoonist that he got to decide what animals represent the parties.

The Democrat Donkey comes from Andrew Jackson's campaign where his opponents called him a jackass and he responded by putting a donkey on his campaign posters.

The Republican Elephant comes from some political cartoons in 1874 depicting republican voters as a rampaging in central park.

Interestingly: back in 1828 when Andrew Jackson was being elected, the Democrats were in no way the champions of the working man. Andrew Jackson represented southern slave holding aristocrats and war mongering. Once in the oval office he went on to commit atrocities against the Cherokee who until the Trail of Tears were allies of the United States. It was a total dick move and probably the worst single thing that the United States ever did.

So yeah, political parties change.

-Username17

Johnny cash sings a song about that. It's pretty good, and there's a whole album of songs about the mistreatement of native americans by european americans.

So did they ever find the WMDs that the Native Americans had that required them to be ejected from their ancestral lands? Oh, wait... I think I have my invasions mixed up.