After I’ve questioned it, fought it, accepted it, and psychoanalyzed it (see Donkey I and Donkey II), I now discover that:

THE DONKEY IS NOT THE OFFICIAL MASCOT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!

This is the startling news I found when digging a little deeper into this whole donkey mess. I hope my internet sources are wrong.  Yes, I mean it, because if they’re not, it means that the Democratic Party has allowed itself to be passively branded with a jackass since 1828. It means that for the past 183 years, the Democratic Party has neither officially adopted the donkey nor kicked it out on its ass (pardon the pun). It means that in close to two centuries, Democrats have not had the initiative, vision, or discipline, to actively choose a mascot for their own party!

During this same time period, Republicans managed to officially adopt  the elephant as their mascot; not only do they wisely pick the largest land animal on the planet, they also choose one which is considered highly intelligent. You gotta hand it to them, Republicans are the masters of political communication. True, their ideas are all wrong, but they know how to make them sound right. They then hammer them home via short, catchy phrases, until most of us (or at least the Independents) start believing them.

How can the Democratic Party, whose tenets and intentions are so noble, be so poor when it comes to communicating them?  In this world of the  24-hour news cycle, haven’t party elders realized that no amount of good work will make a difference if the public doesn’t know about it or gets a distorted message created by the opposing party?

If we don’t get our act together, we risk losing big in 2012, regardless of how much good will have been accomplished in the first four years of the Obama presidency. That would be tragic.

The first step is to choose a mascot worthy of a party that fights for the individual. A mascot that can either equal the elephant in its awesomeness or beat him. The symbolism alone will stump the opposition. In any case, if we start by taking care of a “to do” item that is overdue by almost 200 years, maybe we can begin to act and look like an organized party  instead of like a bunch of jackasses running around. Here are some suggestions:

The Democratic Mouse:  I  hear elephants are deathly afraid of them.
The Democratic Cobra: A king cobra has enough venom to kill an elephant.
The Democratic Lion:   The king of the jungle.  It would take a whole pack to kill an elephant, but better chances than a pack of donkeys.
The Democratic Whale: Hey if we can’t have the largest land animal as our mascot, we can at least have the largest sea animal representing us.

Can you think of other worthy mascots?  Write them in the comments section.  The Democratic Party’s image rests in our hands.

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Note: Post originally published on Feb 25, 2012.