Logical Reasoning

PT129 · S3 · Q22 To win democratic elections

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

Conclusion

Candidates won't compromise their views in order to win the support of wealthy patrons.

Evidence

Even though you need money to win elections and a non-wealthy candidate will need some money from wealthy patrons, the wealthy are dispersed proportionately among the various political parties.

Evaluation

A healthy dose of real world common sense will help us here. In America, let's pretend that rich people are pretty evenly divided among Republicans and Democrats. Does that mean that candidates who need money won't compromise their views in order to get the support of wealthy patrons?

The author is thinking,

We might say, well the Democratic candidates will pander to the rich liberals to get their money. The Republican candidates will pander to the rich conservatives to get their money.

Goal

We need an answer that helps us make an objection that sounds like, .

22.

The argument is vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that it fails to consider that

  1. the primary function of political

    Too Weak / Out of Scope

    "The primary function might not be" is some very weak phrasing, so this is unlikely to be a powerful objection. Was the author assuming that political parties DO primarily function as a means of negating the influence of wealth? Nope, nothing he says sounds like that.

    11% picked this

  2. Correct

    in democracies in which elections

    Why this is right

    Yikes, this is a hard correct answer. Is it allowing us to argue that "even though rich people are distributed equally among the political parties, candidates still compromise their views to win support"? Yes, because if candidates have a wide variety of views but the political parties collectively have a much narrower range of views, then some candidates will have to compromise their views to appeal to any political party / any swath of rich people. This objection is really getting at the idea that there's a distinction between lots of choices and lots of variety. Maybe a candidate has many choices to go after rich people from a big number of political parties, but if those parties have very similar positions, then the candidate doesn't really have much variety to choose from and may have to adapt their own views to fit in with those of a political party.

    Skill tested: Flaw · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    70% picked this

  3. in democracies, government-subsidized elections ensure

    Out of Scope: "government-subsidized elections"

    This argument is about what happens in democracies that don't have subsidized elections. This answer is about what happens in democracies that do. That's irrelevant.

    11% picked this

  4. in democracies in which elections

    Irrelevant Comparison: "wealthy vs. non-wealthy candidate"

    This argument is only about what happens to non-wealthy candidates ("these" candidates) in elections when they need rich patrons. We're only analyzing whether these non-wealthy candidates will / won't compromise their beliefs. It's irrelevant whether wealth or non-wealthy candidates are more likely to win.

    6% picked this

  5. a democracy in which candidates

    Out of Scope: "other flaws"

    This argument is only about whether non-wealthy candidates have to compromise their views to get the support of rich patrons. Any other flaws of this system or any other system are irrelevant to this conversation.

    2% picked this

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