[Images: Democratic and Republican National Committees /Artwork: designslinger]

After a busy weekend replying to all the emails we received from our mini-launch, it's
time to step back and reflect on the big political extravaganzas of the past two weeks. It's not the positions of the nominees, the delegates, or the parties themselves that we we're interested in discussing here, but the two images that kept appearing and reappearing over and over, the Democrat's donkey, and the Republican's elephant.

These two icons have become as synonymous as the identifying symbols of their respective
political organizations as Kodak's "K" or Coca-Cola's "C." Think about it. As soon as you see that donkey or elephant you know immediately which product, platform, or ideology is going to pitched to you. But, why a
donkey and elephant? I remembered hearing something about the donkey being associated with former president Andrew Jackson being called a jackass, but I had no clue as to why the Republican's embraced the elephant of all things.

[Images: Political cartoons via wikipedia /Artwork: designslinger]

Turns out it all began with editorial cartoons. The first appeared in 1828, labeling Jackson as a
jackass (how's that for trivial memory recall!), then in 1837, another cartoon depicted him riding a donkey. But, apparently what really got the ball rolling were two cartoons by Thomas Nast, that appeared in Harper's Weekly in the early 1870's. Regional branches of the major parties still used eagles and roosters, but eventually the national party mover's and shaker's started using the symbols more frequently, as did the media, and the zoological relationship was established.

I began to wonder if this was a purely American phenomenon, or if there were other national
parties that used a mammal as a graphic mascot. I limited the test sample to the following criteria:

                                 1. The country had to be a historically identified partner of the U.S.
                                 2. Considered to be a major political party of that country.
                                 3. It had to be a graphic icon; not just alphabetical characters.

The countries I decided to scope out were: England, France, Germany, Spain, Japan and Australia
for overseas research, and Canada and Mexico as our next door neighbors.

[Images: Parti Socialiste, Conservative Party, Labour Party /Artwork: designslinger]

Number 3, in the criteria category eliminated many a candidate. Several of the major national
organizations used  the first letter's of their party's names as the graphic image for their artwork, so they were
out of the running. Several used an icon of some sort mingled with the alphabet, but they didn't stand on their own. However, Britain's Labour and Conservative Party each use a graphic representation as identifiable to each as the Democrat's donkey and Republican's elephant: the Tory's tree and Labour's rose. The French Socialist and Spanish Socialist Party's have an almost identical "rose in hand" logo. Japan's Liberal Democratic Party use a cartoon drawing of two happy children frolicking under a bright happy sun to let their citizenry know who's who in the Japanese political spectrum.

Well, our highly unscientific, homegrown international research resulted in the following findings:
only the two major U.S. political parties have adopted an animal as their party mascot. Except for the Democratic Party of Luxembourg! They use a graphic representation of a dolphin, or porpoise (I'm not sure which) as a part
of their branding. But, alas, they don't really fit into our survey sample because they are a tiny principality and the water loving mammal is part and parcel of larger graphic image. So, I'll close with this little tidbit; while the donkey is not recogized as an "official" emblem by the Democratic Party, the elephant is incorporated into the opening of the letter "O" in the national Republican Party's' "GOP" logo. They have folded the pachyderm right into their "O"pen arms.