Instinctively, if someone says “animal” and “United States”, you might think of an eagle. Or a bison. Or even an alligator if you know Florida, a coyote if Arizona tempts you, a bull if you are a fan of Michael Jordan… However, the two main political parties in the country have very different animal representations: the donkey for the Democrats, the elephant for the Republicans.
Are Democrats stubborn and stupid? Do Republicans have crazy memories and a clumsy side? Why did you take such emblems? We’ll explain it to you.
A donkey turned upside down
The origin of this fight between the donkey and the elephant does not go back to La Fontaine but was born closer to us, in the 19th century. Particularly in 1828, when the American presidential campaign saw the conservative John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson clash. The latter, progressive, is called “jackass” by his opponents. A term that can be translated as “moron” or “donkey”. He doesn’t care about this image and decides to use it as his own, highlighting the courage and humility of this animal.
Years later, the cartoonist Thomas Nast, favorable to the Republicans, used the donkey in his drawings to represent the Democratic opponent in the Harper’s Weekly. He does this in particular in a sketch from 1870 that remains famous, which pays homage to the Republican Edwin Stanton. Incarnated by a lion in agony, he receives blows from the hooves… of a donkey.
The elephant facing the wind of panic
In 1874, again. As the mid-terms approach, the New York Heraldwhich leans Democratic, supports the hypothesis according to which the current Republican president, Ulysses Grant, will run for a third term. Thomas Nast then makes fun of this rumor in his cartoon Third Term Panic, reminds CNN. We see the Heralda donkey dressed in a lion’s skin, frighten the surrounding animals with the announced dictatorship of Grant. Only the powerful elephant holds up in this wind of panic; elephant which bears the words “The republican vote”.
The roles are distributed, and Nast continues to use this double allegory, as here in 1879.
The image then imprints itself on the collective American imagination and will never leave it. Even if both Democrats and Republicans have tended, in recent times, to rely less on these two historical symbols.
