To win democratic elections that are not fully subsidized by the government, nonwealthy candidates must be supported ...

shunhe on June 16, 2020

Hi @AllisonJ,

Thanks for the question! So let’s take a look at the stimulus here. We’re told that the following belief is false: candidates in democratic elections not fully subsidized by the government won’t have to compromise their views to win support. Now, we’re asked to find a criticism this argument is vulnerable to. And one of the things we can anticipate here is that there might be other reasons to have this belief; there might be other reasons candidates in democratic elections not fully subsidized by the government have to compromise their views. Otherwise, there might be something wrong with this argument itself.

(A) is wrong because the conclusion isn’t about the primary function of political parties; it’s about candidates compromising beliefs.

(B) is the correct answer. It provides an alternative reason that candidates in democratic elections not fully subsidized by the government have to compromise their views: political parties that endorse them have small variety of positions, and so in order to be endorsed by those parties, the candidates will have to contort their positions (thus compromising their views) in order to fit the positions of their parties.

(C) is wrong because it talks about the wealthiest people, when this is kind of a vague term, and different from “the wealthy.”

(D) is wrong because we’re not talking about the wealth of the candidates themselves, but instead their wealthy patrons.

(E) is wrong because we don’t care about any other flaws for the purposes of this argument, those are just irrelevant.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.