Georgetown Debate Seminar Practice Round Seven

1A MARKOV 2A KEJRIWAL V. 1N DAY 2N THIBEAU

This was a fantastic round, really, with a level of depth and sophistication on the technical details of broadband policy that I’d find impressive in December – and it’s July. Each speaker should be proud of the effort and scholarship that went into this debate. I have some technical comments and some substantive ones, working backwards from the 2AR and going through the rebuttals:

2AR: You need to project confidence or you’ll be consistently frustrated by middle-weak panels. You’re intellectually impressive, but a less experienced critic might have received the impression that you’re losing during the 2AR. Debate is partially an exercise in projecting a persona, and I think that’s haunting you more than any specific technical or substantive deficiency. For real - this is a +/1 1 win/tournament question.

Specific ways to correct this:
a. Volume. Be louder. We’ve been over this before.
b. You overuse “even if” formulas. I think it’s useful and good to employ this sort of reasoning, of course, but you need to avoid the appearance that your 2AR is a desperation halfcourt heave. You say, at one point, that “even though their evidence may seem better and more predictive…” Ugh. Sounds desperate – rephrase.
c. Don’t tell the judge that s/he *could* evaluate an issue a given way. Judges are passive creatures – tell us what to do in strongly worded imperatives.
d. You ask your partner “is that OK?” at one point. Don’t do that.

Substantively, you do need to bear down harder on this double solvency question. The relative benefits of the perm will probably determine this debate if they fall behind on politics uniqueness, so you should be drawing out the individual warrants for double solvency and explaining the actual function of the perm. This merits 30 seconds, and potentially more, given its status as a potential nexus point.

2NR: In both of the Thibeau 2NRs I’ve seen, you were technically excellent, and demonstrate a rare command of both debate-technical and substantive details, as well as strategic vision re: case-disad relationships. You’ve been hampered by the evidence set, though. This takes one primary form: you have a single point of offense (politics) in both the block and the 2NR. This lack of diversity ends up making your 2NRs really big. You never drop, and always engage excellent clash. Still, you have very uniform emphasis as a result. You can’t afford to identify a nexus point or slow down slightly on crucial arguments because your strategy makes most every argument crucial.

Fix the 2NR by fixing the 1NC. Y’all need an internal net benefit to your counterplan that makes it a stand-alone win strategy. It’s worth developing this in this instance because of the early memetic penetration of this aff.

I'm impressed with all the weighing arguments, but felt that you should have devleoiped a reason that health care solves their intenral link chain. IT certainly might, by delineating more disposable income, for instance, that allows free market broadband purchases. It would be easy to get some cards on this, and it would be incredibly high yield.

We speculated on this briefly in the round. It sounds like the counterplan will probably pass costs off onto municipalities, which might trade off with municipal wi-fi; that’s promising as a DA to the CP, despite uniqueness problems. I am SURE there is some way that we can incorporate the reactions of the telcos or cable providers to construct a net neutrality disad. (That’s just such a huge debate; there must be a link.) I think we need to devote some more thought, though, to better specific disads or internal net benefits to make this 1nc more dangerous and this 2NR less diffuse.

1AR: Great speech - impressive efficiency, and generation of new arguments. Great efficiency on the theory debate as well. You invest heavily in a geographic distinction between urban and rural broadband access – is this carded? It should be.

I’d consider carding this further with rural-specific internal links to the aff, and impacting it as a distinct add-on somewhere in this debate. The CO2 add-on – or other telecommuting good addons – would probably be a wise choice.

Consider a refinement of your embedded clash system. Instead of labeling your argument sections as “link” or “impact”, you could label them according to YOUR argument – “telcos love the plan” or “health care isn’t crucial to the economy.” I’d experiment with this for a 1AR or two to see if it helps you.

1NR: excellent. Your mastery of details leads me to believe that you’ve read a good deal on this subject, and I’m either impressed with your research or your ability to fake it – probably your research.

My major criticism revolves around strategy, not tactics - the 1NC position forces you to violate the cardinal rule of standalone relevance - could the speech win without the 1NC? It can’t, and I think that’s a shame. This is an evidence failure. You simply need more offense – either on the case or on a distinct net benefit. You could collapse to a smaller fraction of 1NC case defense arguments and potentially go for T? I don’t like that stylistically – I want you to exploit your knowledge of the intricacies of this debate, but I think that the kluge move might have more tactical utility.