A first-term “non-zombie DPJ HOR”—someone who got listed for one reason or another on the DPJ’s regional proportional list for the House of Representatives election in 2009 and made it in on the coattails of the dump-the-LDP landslide in 2009—on the list of 38 HORs that voted against the consumption tax hike bill on June 29 and let their names remain on the secession list on July 2, chickened out today (July 3) and rescinded his secession, a decision that the DPJ apparently welcomed with open arms (and a likely suspension). Tomohiko Mizuno, the repentant HOR, is a graduate from a dentist’s college that I’d never heard of before and his pre-HOR political career consists of one unsuccessful run for a prefectural assembly seat in 2007 when he was in his late forties, which suggests a character in need of serious handholding and caresses before you push him out the back of the plane for his first parachute dive. And Chobin Zukeran, a SMD member from Okinawa—another caution flag—has told the press, since it asked, that he will play the independent game for the time being.

All in all, it has been a horrible rollout for Ozawa. But what can he expect when the one guy that you have left who will do everything he can expect to do his bidding is the clownish, blustering Kenji Yamaoka?

In his defense, it probably was not just pure stupidity that led him to orchestrate the bum rush that he gave to the men and women who had entrusted their secession papers to Ozawa. No. He must have done that in large part because he knew that many of them would get cold feet if they had more than a moment to reflect on what they were doing. In short, he were doing what every cold-call salesmean, teleshopping hawkers and or other con mean does to make the mark commit before he/she hads a chance to think. In that’s sense, Yamaoka did take a page from the manuals of his erstwhile multilayered marketing patrons.

And maybe Ozawa is a “spent force” after all.