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The symbol of the Democratic party, the donkey, isn’t just an odd political symbol. It’s also a pretty direct way of calling Democrats “jackasses,” since that’s how the symbol originated:

The Democratic Party of America adopted the donkey logo specifically because the media kept calling Andrew Jackson a jackass.

In fact, both the Democrats’ donkey and the Republicans’ elephant trace their origins to political cartoonists of the day, who used these animals to represent the respective parties in their scathing doodles. The reason they called the Republicans elephants is more or less lost to history (maybe a Republican went nuts and trampled a bunch of people?), but when lampooning Jackson, they drew the Democratic president as a jackass to signify his stubbornness and, to their mind, stupidity.

Take a look:

Via Cracked.

More historical facts.

Photo credit: loc.gov