The historic taking of the Alabama Legislature by the Republican Party after Tuesday’s election brings to mind V.O. Key Jr.’s masterpiece “Southern Politics in State and Nation,” in which he said the failure of democracy in the South could be traced to the absence of party competition.

This election season, the dual party system worked for better and for worse in Alabama.

The Democratic Party was driven by the New South Coalition, a top-down organization driven by high-profile black leaders who use the same kind of bloc voting tactics used in the old plantation system of the Citizens Council. When the Democratic Party nominee for governor began losing ground, the top resorted to fear tactics threatening a return to the racial politics of old and conjuring up visions of $2 cotton collected by black men, women and children in the fields.

Those who flipped over during the Reagan years or eased over before that with the Goldwater take-no-prisoners attitude drove the Republican leadership. The GOP did no better, using emotionally charged issues, such as immigration, family values and patriotism to woo many blue-color voters to cast ballots against their own best interests for the party of the wealthy.

Welcome to the two-party system.

Yet, as painful as it might be for the partisan, this development is exactly what Key saw more than 50 years out — the emergence of a serious and sustained dual party system in the South.

At one point, Key had seen the development of a democratic two-party system in the South as the eventual antagonist to racial politics that had driven Southern states since Reconstruction.

Sadly, this particular election emphasized racial politics more than the opposite. The South, at least Alabama, seems to have remained illiberal and undemocratic. So much for the maturity of a dual-party system based on ideas.