Well, Arf Lovers, some of you have been waiting for this one for a while: today in 1870, Thomas Nast’s first used the image of a donkey to represent the Democratic Party (aka Copperheads). The jackass was first used as a symbol for that party way back during the presidency of “stubborn” Andrew Jackson, but it was Nast who popularized the image. Years later he would do the same with the GOP elephant.