When we read the question, this question has a novel characteristic, boldfaced text. The question stem asks for the role of the boldfaced text, and the answer choices are stated in general, logical terms, not in terms of the specifics of the argument. Indeed, all boldfaced text questions have these properties: a prompt that contains one or more arguments; a question stem that asks for the role of the boldfaced statements; and answer choices that are stated in general, logical terms.

On boldfaced questions, you don't need to evaluate the argument. Rather, summarize the role of the boldfaced statements and how the boldfaced statements are related to the non-boldfaced statements, and look for your summary in the answer choices.

We can make a prediction: we have multiple arguments here. Opinion-charged words can be our guides. The phrase "many people blame" kicks off one argument. Then, the phrase, "yet clearly," kicks off an opposing viewpoint. On the basis of those observations alone, we can construct a prediction to evaluate the answer choices. The boldfaced sentence gives the opinion of many people, and then the rest of the prompt is the pundit's counterargument.

Testing this prediction, matching our prediction with the answer choices, we find that it's present in (E).

The correct answer is (E).