DDI Tournament 1
Reason for Decision
This was a debate in which – late in the debate – the affirmative fixated way too much on
answering low-quality negative arguments and way too little on the case.
I voted negative because the plan causes a Romney victory in November, which ensures runaway
climate change as a result of scaled back Environmental Protection Agency authority. Climate
change – in this debate – decisively both outweighs and turns the case.
I determined first that the risk of the disadvantage was quite high – I didn’t think the 2AR’s
internal link presses were sufficient to lower the risk of the DA in a meaningful way given the
relative strength of the 1AR and 2NR on this series of arguments.
The disadvantage unquestionably turns the case – the 1NR reads four cards on this issue that are
never once answered by the affirmative.
It also outweighs the case – I think that the consequentialism debate is close, but that the
affirmative wins that utility should be the preferred filter through which impacts are evaluated.
Even if the negative had lost this argument, though, I thought that the “turns case” arguments
were also a justification to vote negative because “climate change exacerbates racism.”
I thought for a little while about the affirmative’s plea to ignore the disadvantage because of its
likely-contrived nature. I would have had a great degree of difficulty electing to vote affirmative
on this argument…first, because – as I said earlier – I think the negative won that the risk of the
DA is near-certain and second because the “turns case” arguments flip most of your “vote aff to do
something about racism” arguments.
I didn’t feel like I had to evaluate “racism versus warming” as a result of the aforementioned ways
in which the DA interacted with the case. If I had had to engage this part of the debate more, I
likely would have decided that the relative importance of addressing racism and degree to which
the affirmative solved racism were quite small.
COMMENTS
AFFIRMATIVE:
1A – 27.5, 4
1AC:
Clarity is only okay.
Your answers in cross-x really leave something to be desired – it seems like you’re ceding a lot of the case early when you don’t have
to.
1AR:
This is a 1AR that requires a redo.
The case flow was VERY inefficient, and really only shadow-extended 2AC arguments. For example, the “residential segregation” and
“gift” arguments were well-explained in the 2NC, complete with link explanations and new pieces of evidence. To these arguments,
you only responded by tag-line-extending your 2AC evidence. The 1AR on BOTH case flows should instead strive to use embedded
clash (both organizationally and argumentatively) to group large swaths of 2NC argumentation and answer them in a like fashion with
answers embedded in the 1ac.
Speaking of the 1ac, what happened to it? Seems like you extended very little impact to the aff in the 1AR.
Your impact-enframing arguments need work, too. It isn’t enough to just assert that their scenarios are low-risk if you have not
contested their internal link chains. Maybe this is more of a comment for the 2AC…
You should try to quantify your solvency deficit to the counterplan – how much of a solvency deficit is “enough” to overcome the
impact to the net benefit?
Elections – don’t drop that warming turns the case…they read like 4 cards for this claim.
2A – 27.9, 2
2AC:
Mostly good. Top-heavy though; which is why you weren’t able to read your impact defense against warming.
You really seem hesitant to answer the negative’s questions about the term minority. To be fair, I think their argument (and word pics
generally) are quite stupid; but you increase the credibility of their argument when you become so unwilling to firmly explain your
argument to their pic.
2AR:
The 1AR did not include a coherent argument indicting the internal link chain of the negative’s disadvantage…absent this argument, I
don’t think your impact framing arguments are winnable.
Still dropping way too much on the case to really win much of an impact to the aff.
Can’t concede that the DA turns the case…if they win this argument, it interacts with your risk calculus claims in a way that is very
destructive for the 2ar’s greater narrative.
Also – the defensive arguments you’re going for on the DA need to be better-explained – the 2NR answered these arguments in a pretty
detailed fashion – there was a lot of link explanation, etc. The 2AR you delivered only referenced them in a one line, “our argument
was ____” fashion. You need arguments about why your internal link takeouts are TRUE.
NEGATIVE:
1N – 27.7, 3
1NC:
Clarity isn’t great.
I am totally unsure why you would package the word pic and the states argument as one. It seems like it narrows your options in a
drastic fashion – if the aff has a defense of the FG, it’s a DA to the word pic; if the aff has a defense of the term minority, it’s a DA to
state action.
Stop using the word “probably” – it undercuts the credibility of your argument in CX. Your counterplan doesn’t “probably solve” – “it
solves because…”
1NR:
Mostly this speech is fine – clarity is still awful. The elections flow was also one where prioritization needed improvement – no need to
read three UQ cards, for example, but you could have spent more time explaining the link spin.
2N – 28.7, 1
2NC:
Mostly a very good speech.
Some technical issues – not sure you had an answer to the affirmative argument that “the counterplan’s logic is the same that allows
racism,” for example.
Not a huge fan of your minority argument…and even as you extend it, you don’t do a terribly effective job of explaining the impact to
the term. You do a pretty good job of explaining why the aff has no offensive justification of the term…which is fair…but aside from a
few sentences about government functionality, your impact seems forgotten.
2NR:
DA 1st in the 2NR – it’s your offense.
I thought the 2NR was an effective speech, but one that could’ve been delivered in a more effective package.
I don’t think you should kick the counterplan. There’s so little solvency deficit that this seems like the easiest route to victory for you.
The work you did on the case in this speech was probably adequate, but I don’t understand taking the harder route to victory in this
instance. If you go for the counterplan, you can probably extend it in an extremely short amount of time – in fact, if you don’t extend
your “minority K,” you can probably extend the substance of the cplan without changing much else in the 2NR. Regardless – if the
counterplan solves most of the case (an argument that you can’t really lose) then all of the arguments on case (the flow on which the
1AR did the most/best work) are largely irrelevant. Sure – you can / should still GO to the case flow and extend some defensive
arguments to hedge against their solvency deficit claims in the 2ar – but the degree to which you have to neutralize the case is much
lower if there’s a counterplan in the 2NR.
Did you drop theory?