As the New Orleans coup suggests, the Democratic Party enforced one-party rule by crushing white Republicans, too. “Democrats controlled all election laws and election administration, and they took care to keep barriers to entry of potential opponents prohibitively high,” writes Mickey. “Several states, by party rule or statute, barred previously disloyal candidates, or those who failed to pledge themselves to the values of the Democratic party, from running for office—even as independents.”9 And thus the southern Democratic Party succeeded in consolidating authoritarian control over the Deep
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So they've done it before.
