Constitutional Democrats in disarray

The CDP reacts to the Ishimaru shock

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While the Liberal Democratic Party has been in crisis mode for months – Obuchi Yūko, the election strategy chair spoke for many in the LDP when she said Friday, “The next general election will be a do-or-die struggle” – the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), Japan’s leading opposition party, has been feeling confident since it swept the 28 April by-elections.

However, with Renhō, one of the CDP’s most prominent politicians, unexpectedly finishing in a distant third place in Tokyo’s gubernatorial election on 7 July, the party has joined the LDP in having an existential crisis.

Ozawa Ichirō, who at eighty-two is continuing to live up to his reputation as the “destroyer” of parties, kicked things off when he accused CDP leader Izumi Kenta of “taking the party under” and called for the CDP’s national and Tokyo leadership to take responsibility for the Tokyo election and resign. Former prime minister Noda Yoshihiko, while not necessarily calling for a change of leadership, said that in light of how Ishimaru Shinji used social media to surge past Renhō, the party needs to rethink its strategy for the next general election from the ground up. Both he and Ozawa want to see more coordination with other opposition parties. So too does Yoshino Tomoko, leader of the organized labor federation Rengo, one of the CDP’s most important constituencies, who wants the CDP to shun the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), attributing Renhō’s loss to her alliance with the JCP.

Izumi and the CDP’s leadership have by no means downplayed the significance of the Tokyo defeat, and have launched their own review, particularly of why Renhō performed so poorly among independents, whose support will be indispensable for the CDP to make serious inroads against the ruling coalition in the next general election. The problems the CDP faces, however, are the same ones that the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and its successor parties have faced since 2012. None of these problems can be solved simply by choosing a new leader or rewriting the party platform.

Perhaps most significantly, the CDP has a DPJ problem. After trusting the center-left opposition with power in 2009, the electorate, particularly independents, recoiled after the DPJ’s three years in power. To some extent, the only way for the Japanese political system to return to the more competitive two-party system that prevailed during the first decade of the century is for voters to forget the DPJ years and shed their allergy to the center-left opposition. The problem is that the CDP is, of course, dominated by DPJ veterans. At every turn, voters are reminded of the DPJ. Ozawa, the former DPJ leader and secretary-general. Noda, its last prime minister. Edano, the chief cabinet secretary during the 3/11 triple disasters. Renhō, who made her name as a cabinet minister going after bureaucrats for wasteful spending. Nagatsuma Akira, Izumi’s deputy, who became notorious for his tenure as minister of health, labor, and welfare. Okada Katsuya, Hatoyama Yukio’s foreign minister, a two-time DPJ leader, and three-time DPJ secretary-general. Izumi Kenta, meanwhile, is practically the only CDP leader who did not occupy a senior position in the DPJ.

However, now some senior CDP members – also veterans of the DPJ governments – are arguing that to convince voters that the CDP is able to govern, Izumi should step aside in favor of Noda, who, after all, has already been prime minister. In other words, the party should opt for the sixty-seven-year-old Noda because he is more experienced, over Izumi, who is only forty-nine and did not hold senior government or party positions when the DPJ was in power.

But if the Ishimaru boom in Tokyo suggested that voters want new political voices, it is difficult to see how going into the next general election with literally the last DPJ prime minister at the helm will help convince voters that the CDP can be that new political voice. Whether or not Izumi is the right leader for the CDP, he at least can credibly claim to represent a new generation of political leadership. There is no way around the DPJ problem. As Fujikawa Shinnosuke, Ishimaru’s campaign manager, said in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun, the CDP cannot run on policy appeals because voters do not trust its promises after the failures of the DPJ-led governments.

That said, the futility of competition based on policy is not just about broken promises. It is also about the LDP’s success in monopolizing the political center, first under Abe Shinzō and now under Kishida Fumio, particularly on the bread-and-butter issues that are most important to voters. The LDP’s record on the economy is by no means spotless but it has effectively balanced between competing constituencies, making it difficult for the CDP or any opposition party to mobilize voters with policy appeals. Even organized labor, supposedly the bedrock constituency for the center-left, has been happy to work with Abe and his successors in pursuit of higher wages for unionized workers. Maybe the erosion of household incomes due to a historically weak yen gives the CDP a wedge issue to attack the LDP – the mirror issue of Abe’s using a historically strong yen in 2012 to attack the DPJ – but there is little sign that the CDP can and will be able to tap into disaffection with the yen, perhaps because there is not necessarily an easy policy solution. Meanwhile, the CDP is barely even trying to differentiate itself on national security – a big difference from when the party was founded in 2017, when one of its central planks was repealing the 2015 national security laws – as public opinion has shifted in the LDP’s favor. Valence issues like corruption or effective leadership are still the foundation for political competition, but a new and largely unknown political actor like Ishimaru may be able to appeal to voters on these issues than an established opposition party tainted both by memories of its time in power and the compromises it has had to make while in opposition.

In this sense, the debate within the CDP over strategic electoral coordination is beside the point. Other things being equal, it would be better if there were fewer opposition candidates dividing the non-LDP vote. The mixed single-member-district/proportion representation electoral system means that smaller parties will continue to be a part of the system, meaning that coordination will be unavoidable (as the LDP and Kōmeitō have learned). But if the CDP were able to mobilize independents, it would matter considerably less if its candidates were facing other opposition candidates. The debate over cooperation with the JCP versus Democratic Party for the People (DPFP) or other centrist parties is a product of the low turnout environment that has prevailed since 2012, built on the assumption that if the non-LDP parties can pool their most reliable supporters more effectively, they might win some marginal seats.

However, the DPJ won power because it was able to convince unaffiliated – and unorganized – voters turn out to vote for it, not because it coordinated effectively. What Renhō’s third-place finish – and Ishimaru’s surprising rise – showed is that convincing these voters to vote for the CDP is ultimately the problem the party must solve. Electoral coordination should be part of the party’s strategy, but it cannot substitute for a broader plan for reaching out to and mobilizing independents.¹ The CDP urgently needs to figure out how it can capture the independents who are clearly hungry for change but see the CDP as too stodgy, too establishment, or too unreliable to provide it.

1. In an interview at the CDP’s website, Ozawa argues that cooperation among opposition parties is the key to victory and social change. It is unclear how he thinks opposition parties should cooperate or how the CDP can cooperate with Ishin no Kai, when the latter has unconcealed loathing for the CDP and wants to destroy it.