Coronating Kamala

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Four more days and the silly season of American politics
will end. Will be just seventy five days to the election.
The Democrats convene in Chicago starting today to coronate Kamala
Harris of California as their presidential nominee. Now, four months
ago that would have qualified as silly. Her ratings were

(00:22):
the lowest of any vice president in modern history, and
a lot of big cigar smokers in the party wanted
her out. But Creaky Joe Biden took a header during
a live debate and then whifted a couple of more
public at bets, and those same puppeteers got him dumped.
And even though surveys showed darn near anybody would have
pulled better than Biden, the chance to elect the first

(00:44):
biracial woman as president was just too delectable for the
Democrats to pass up. So it's her now. Trump looks
like the old guy, and her poll numbers are surging. Well,
they last checked back in eighty days. Since we we've
got a little time, let's stay in the silly stuff
for a while longer. The de facto symbol of the

(01:06):
Democrat Party is the donkey. Now, from where did that symbol. Come,
what party would use a goofy looking, scraggle haired, long eared,
roached back two point zero horse as its symbol? And
why do they keep it? And it goes back quite
a ways? Got to remember now, For many years, the

(01:26):
most influential power in American politics was the daily newspaper.
For over a century, since public education still eluded most Americans,
meaning a lot of them were barely literate, the most
potent weapon in the newspaper was the political cartoon. Thomas Nast,
a German born caricaturist, was the most famous. His work

(01:48):
was published across the country and avowed Republican Abraham Lincoln
credited him with his eighteen sixty four re election victory
more than thirty years prior. In the election of eighteen
twenty eight, he depicted war hero but famous malcontent Andrew
Jackson unflatteringly did a cartoon with Jackson's face attached to

(02:12):
a bucking donkey's body. The caption was Andrew jack Ass
but it backfired on his rivals. Jackson loved it, used
it in his campaign admitted, Yeah, like a donkey, i
am stubborn, but I'm also loyal, determined, and like you
and me donkeys are common, much did the chagrin of

(02:33):
his political rivals. It stuck. The Beast of Burden became
his mascot. Jackson was elected in eighteen twenty eight and
re elected in eighteen thirty two. Maybe we could use
a few like old Jackass these days. The last time
this government was debt free eighteen thirty six, when Jackson
wrote a check paying off the last bill of his presidency.

(02:56):
There were a lot of bad things that happened under Jackson,
specifically the external nation of Native Americans, but most historians
rank him in the all time top ten. Now, as
much as we've seen it, the donkey has never actually
been officially adopted as the symbol for the Democrat Party.
It just sort of stuck around. Nast gets credit with
popularizing and then cementing the association. He kept using it

(03:19):
to define Democrats, thinking one day the negatives will finally
outweigh the positives. In eighteen seventy four he did one
entitled The Fine Ass Committee, featuring Democrats for Congress with
donkey heads blowing bubbles of inflation from a cup of
soft soap. Franklin Roosevelt made sure the voters knew that
he had a donkey as a kid. Lyndon Johnson may

(03:43):
have been the last to bring it up in public.
Things weren't going well for him then, riots, assassinations, Vietnam.
He said being president is quote like being a jackass
in a hailstorm. All you do is stand there and
take it