Georgetown Debate Seminar Practice Round Three

Aff: 1a Kirshon/ 2a Bernick v. 1n Kejriwal/ 2n Thibeau

1ac: Good clarity. Try to breathe at punctuation marks. This isn’t mandatory, but it will make your speech much smoother. Interrupting sentences with gasping breaths distracts from the text of your speech.

CX of 1AC:

Question one doesn't seem like the strongest start. It's an inherency question; that isn’t really a pressure point unless you have incredibly specific politics links. As it stands, this inherency argument probably compromises politics uniqueness, so it’s unlikely to make it into the 2NR.

Start off with your strongest argument, such as a genuinely glaring internal link hole that’s difficult to paper over, or a source credibility argument that makes them look bad.

This reverse causation question IS a serious pressure point for the 1AC. They don’t repeal reporting requirements, which probably compromises solvency severely. Start off with this line, and keep your foot on his neck for a question or two.

You conclude lines of questioning by saying “fair enough.” This sounds reasonable and gentlemanly, which I appreciate, but it vitiates the impact of a particular line of questioning. I do prefer CX-ers who restate their argument (“So you actually can’t solve your aff because you don’t affect reporting requirements”) and move on. It may manipulate the format, and some amy see it as too aggressive, but I’d at least like to know what you THOUGHT you got out of a particular line of questiong.

1NC:

LOUDER!

If you are just LOUDER you would likely gain 1-2 speaker points over the course of prelims.

Your arg: “low volume makes me faster.” A few responses.

1. Comprehension outweighs. “Fast” means “maximizing arguments that the judge writes down” not “maximizing the arguments that I speak.”
2. Empirically disproven. The fastest debaters are quite loud, in my experience.

This violation needs to be compressed. I wrote it too long.

I don't know if your health care link is good enough to safely make partial inherency arguments. Won't this just non-unique your disad? I’m sure you have answers, but they can also distinguish their aff from the status quo even more easily. This is not worth the trouble.

“No internal link = voter” isn't worth your breath. I often have a low threshold for voting on theory compared to some, but I can’t imagine voting on this even if dropped.

I think generally you need to consolidate anayltic defense into categories of risk reduction. 2-3 good, longer analytics instead of 7-8 threshold presses.

You need more disads to this aff. Limited 1NC offense makes the 2NR difficult, to say the least.

2AC: Apply inherency args to uniqueness.

FASTER! FASTER! FASTER! ENERGY! ENERGY! ENERGY! You are clear. You can read fast. I have seen it happen. No barrier stops you from being one of the fastest debaters in the nation; some behavior mod is all it should take.

Where is this racism stuff going? Are you working your way toward a moral imperative? I generally think that “moral” arguments are best couched in terms of role of the ballot. It’s difficult for me to accept that I should extinguish the species to take a stand; it’s easy for me to accept that I should modify the function of my ballot to express solidarity with anti-racist sentiments.

More carded offense on politics! Trust me, I love analytic politics defense more than most, but
a. I’m not every judge
b. even I need a card for some of this stuff. Extrapolating winners win from their evidence is clever, but dicey.

More add-ons! You should have several “signal” addons prepared vs. states counterplans. This is almost mandatory. Negs prepare counterplans against the advantages you do run, not the advantages you might run, making 2AC adjustments a crucial component of many aff ballots.

2AC CX:
Arnav – you need to have a game plan. Cross-xing the 2AC is, admittedly, the lamest cross-x, identify a few things you might get out of this.

2NC: Very good – great articulation, speed, and a superb effort to engage in early and aggressive risk comparison.

The politics coverage needs more vertical depth, though. I think you should be reading more evidence. Not a huge adjustment, but 6 instead of 5:30 would have been better.

It’s useless to give people access to a health care that’s completely broken. Overall system functioning trumps universal access for all their internal links – that means you uniquely turn all the advantages. You do say something along these lines, but I see this as a potential round winner that merits another sentence (maybe even two?) of explanation.

Pretty sketchy on intrinsicness, akshually; this is a vulnerable point. More on this in the 2NR explanation.

1AR: You took prep – that’s good.

I wish you had made some theory cross-applications. Their defenses of both 50 state fiat and conditionality probably justify the intrinsicness arguments that you invested in heavily. Get in the habit of partial concessions that generate new arguments very quickly, based on U ev they read & theory especially.

Good job at generating new-ish politics arguments. You need more cards here, though.

While I’m not a huge aesthetic fan of going for every advantage, I understand and agree with your tactics in this situation.

2NR: This 2NR is great on the micro-level. I also think you probably go for the right thing. A lack of diverse 1NC offense comes back to haunt you, though – this ends up being bigger than it should be.

Two major risks hurt you. First, if your defensive evidence isn’t excellent, you might be faced with a number of extinction level risk. You articulate some ways that the aff can’t sovle your impact, but unless you solve their impact, you might face a valid case for try-or-die in the 2AR. (Even if you turn the case, the status quo still leads inexorably toward extinction if they win a huge risk of their advantage uniqueness claim.)
Secondly, you're really banking on me bailing you out on intrinsicness. I feel that this is sort of a Dwayne Wade approach – wade into traffic and wait for a whistle to bail you out. Sometimes, you can count on a whistle – if you’re neg and running a single reasonable counterplan, you’re unlikely to get whistled on condo bad in a good debate. Don’t count on the refs here, though – I’m less likely to dismiss intrinsicness than many. In general, intrinsicness is a little dangerous for the neg, because the aff is just defending “logic” or a decision-making model, instead of crying like a hurt child.

2AR: Good argument choice on politics. You really locked down on two potentially winning arguments. I kind of wish you had been able to put up a fight on uniqueness as well

Reference evidence for your claim that “xenophobia is the crucial/ONLY internal link to racism.” I can imagine a card that substantiates such an argument, but you leave this entirely to my imagination

They have a rhetorical K, but they’ve never made a role of the ballot argument. I’m not sure why the rhetoric of your advantage should influence my ballot. They don’t link this argument to the plan. Although the 2AR is a little late for this, I think it’s a quick shot, given how obvious this problem seems.

I always have difficulty filtering a “moral obligation” claim against an extinction impact. I find it difficult to accept extinguishing humanity for the sake of a principle. I almost universally prefer that teams cast their moral obligation arguments as role of the ballot argument. I mentioned this above.

Discuss terminal UNIQUENESS on their internal links. Failure to treat immigrants breaks the health care system in ways that they can’t compensate for. You make the clever argument that swine flu proves that the system works now, but it might not be able to work for immigrants. However, you refer to this very briefly at least.