Elephants and donkeys are scaring the voters

You can't blame me for being a little schizophrenic. One minute I'm a left-wing, pinko, liberal, homosexual sympathizer and the next I'm being called a right-wing, conservative, no-loving, no-feeling, money-grubbing war-monger.

And I'm probably not the only victim in this volleyball game of "wingers" disguised as elephants and jackasses.

You know it's an election year when Republicans forsake golf on Memorial Day weekend to attend the state convention in Carson City.

It appears the delegates actually did themselves some good by getting out of the sun. They finally decided to dump the abortion issue from the state platform, realizing that voters would really rather not have a president tell them how, or how not, to have babies.

They said that in 1992, when Clinton beat G.W. Bush (the father) by 5 million votes and again in 1996 when Clinton beat Dole by 8 million votes.

So it's only taken Republicans eight years to get it. At least in Nevada.

Maybe that explains why there's been a general apathy in Nevada for general elections. In the 1996 general election, Nevada had the lowest voter turnout in the country. Only 38.3 percent of those eligible to vote in that presidential election voted. And only 64 percent of those registered to vote cast a ballot. Only Hawaii had a lower percentage.

As of the end of April, Nevada had 918,001 folks registered to vote in the 2000 election. That's nearly 140,000 more than were registered in 1996. Of those registered thus far (and the deadline isn't until Aug. 5), 381,440 are Democrats, 378,754 are Republicans, 130,535 are described as "Non-partisans," 5,177 Libertarians, 995 Green Party, 17,639 Independents, 718 Natural Law, 693 Reform Party and 2,050 are categorized as "Other," which might include a few residents of Area 51.

When you total up those registered outside the two-party system there's enough of them to make a dent, but still not enough to put anyone but a Democrat or Republican in office.

At least not yet.

I sense, though, that folks are becoming weary of the same old noise coming from the two camps year in and year out.

I called up the Democrat National Committee Web site on Monday and the headlines accused Bush (the son) of breaking his promise to gays and lesbians. Shows you how much I know. I always thought a lesbian was gay.

Another article accused Bush of hiding a tape recording of a meeting he had with "Far Right" conservatives last October. They're not sure what was said at that meeting, but the Democrats are guessing Bush promised to stand up to gun safety advocates. Either that or he promised to work to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision by appointing only anti-choice Supreme Court Justices.

The Republican website features a "World According to Gore" icon, where we get to hear Al tell us how he invented both the Internet and Love Canal. He also says Bill Clinton will go down as one of the greatest presidents of all time, a suggestion that Republicans find as absurd as a threesome involving an intern, cigar and president.

In other words, the next president will be chosen based on America's appetite for sex, sexual preference, guns and babies.

In order to understand how we reached this level of political sophistication (pun intended) we see today, we must go back 125 years or so, to the origins of the elephant and jackass (which later became a donkey for obvious reasons).

An editorial cartoonist for Harper's Weekly first connected elephants to Republicans in 1874. He took two unrelated events (a rumored third-term try by President Ulysses S. Grant and a New York Herald fabrication of wild animals escaping the zoo and roaming Central Park) and tied them together.

"He (the cartoonist) showed an ass (symbolizing the Herald) wearing a lion's skin frightening away the animals in Central Park," read the historical detail. The caption beneath the cartoon read: "An ass having put on a lion's skin roamed about in the forest and amused himself by frightening all the foolish animals he met within his wanderings."

One of those foolish animals was an elephant, representing the Republican vote that year, which saw them turn away after being convinced that Grant would be a shoe-in for a third term. Grant retired instead and Republican Rutherford Hayes won by a single electorate vote.

The jackass, now referred to as a donkey, made the natural transition from representing the Herald to representing the Democratic Party that had frightened the elephant nearly to death.

Nothing much has changed in the past 125 years. We still have jackasses dressed as lions scaring poor old elephants into believing things they don't really believe.

And we wonder why voters are apathetic today.

Jeff Ackerman is publisher and editor of the Nevada Appeal.