Shinzo Abe's Bait-and-Switch Campaign Strategy

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is doing it again: campaigning on Abenomics while distracting voters' attention away from his real agenda. When he got elected in 2012, Abe ran on Abenomics and kept his revisionist political and historical agenda under wraps, knowing that it does not resonate with voters. He then passed the unpopular secrecy law. In 2014, he called a snap election and again campaigned on Abenomics, diverting attention from his plans to lift constitutional constraints on Japan's military. Subsequently, in 2015, he signed on to new U.S.-Japan defense guidelines that expand what Japan is prepared to do militarily to support its allies. That same year he pushed through enabling legislation despite negligible public support — in the form of massive demonstrations and polls indicating majority opposition to his plans — for his goal of overturning Japan's postwar laws on security policy. Subsequently citizens have filed a series of lawsuits nationwide against the legislation, arguing that it violates their constitutional rights.