On Being Negative at the start of the year
Mat brings up an excellent question in the comments section of this post on a possible affirmative case. Thanks for bringing up the question about how to prepare for the negative.
As I mentioned at the RCC camp writing your affirmative was the #1 goal back in August. Hopefully by now everyone has at least something put together – even if it’s not the best case – but again, that’s the point of having one topic all year long. Your case now should not be as good as your case will be in April. If you need help with cases see my earlier posts here and here and the Evidence set from the Lafayette Camp. That should give you some ideas on getting a case done. If you are planning on attending the RCC tournament you should probably have your 1AC done by this week.
Which brings us to the other side of the coin – going negative. I’m not going to sugar coat this – but you will probably lose most of your negative debates at the beginning of the year =) Unless you are very good at predicting what a debater will run you will probably, at this point in the year, have very little case specific evidence. A philosophy my high school policy coach taught me that helped me deal with the first few tournaments is that “it is OK to lose to a brand new case the first time but never the second time.” That being, if you have no good evidence or strategy against a case, or in other words, you were caught off guard, it’s not that bad to have lost the case. However, if you hear the case a second time you better then be prepared. Make sure to get all the citations, authors, and facts of a brand new case down on your flow and go research the heck out of it so the next time you hear that case you will be prepared to win on the negative.
Mr. Miller, in a soon to be posted video from the RCC camp, also points out that even if you are pretty sure you are going to lose a case due to lack of evidence/strategy, you still want to do your best debating to minimize the impact of the loss. You can still get good speaker points in a round if you do everything else right and don’t resign yourself to losing the moment you realize you have nothing specific against the case.
So instead of case specific arguments the first time you hear a case you will need to rely on generics. Hopefully in your research for your affirmative case you have come across at least a few articles saying that transportation reform will fail. I’d shoot to have at least a few generic pieces of evidence focusing on each of the four major transportation infrastructure areas (road, rail, air and sea) explaining about how any reform will fail. I will be on the lookout for some helpful cites in the next few weeks for generic negative evidence.
However, one of the appeals of NFA-LD for me is the clear statement that NFA-LD is supposed to be stock-issues debate:
The official decision-making paradigm of NFA LD is that of Stock Issues: Harm (Advantage or Goals), Inherency, and Solvency. The affirmative is required to meet three initial burdens. The affirmative must prove:
The harm of the present system or that a comparative advantage or goal can be achieved over the present system;
The inherency which prevents solving those harms or achieving those advantages or goals;
and,
the proposed plan’s ability to solve the harm or achieve the advantage or goal claimed by affirmative.
The negative may attack any of these issues, but need only win one to win the debate. The negative may also challenge the jurisdiction (topicality) of the affirmative proposal or argue that disadvantages to the proposal outweigh its benefits.
As the negative you only need to win one of the stock issues to win the debate. So, if, as I prefaced this post at the beginning, the affirmative case you are hearing is not exactly solid gold, you may be able to slide away with a win just by pounding against one of the weaker stock issues in the affirmative case. You will then likely have to further explain the stock issues paradigm and why, if at the end of the debate, you have successfully shown there is no inherency to the case, you win the debate even if the affirmative solves the harms.
And of course, you can always rely on topicality… Although I urge debaters to refrain from running topicality if the case is within the middle of the topic. I was always so disappointed in debaters last year who ran topicality on the embargo case… you should have some negative against the heart of this year’s topic. I will post a few good sites to get some generic evidence soon.
Any suggestions you all have for going negative at the beginning of the year?
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
Yeah. Tell the judge you’ll be going two minutes overtime in rebuttal so that speaking time in the debate will be equal. (I’d be tempted to allow that.)
Seriously: (1) T! T! T! – well-thought-out, well-researched, and most importantly – SPECIFICALLY ADAPTED to the particulars of the Affirmative Plan. (2) a GOOD K. (3) a GOOD Counterplan. (4) GOOD generic DA’s – none of this “Red China will nuke us if we repair our own highways” gibberish.
(5) GOOD cross-examination.
My best advice so far is do not run the DAs from the Lafayette camp. They are not externally consistent and as an advocate you build credibility by making sensible arguments.
Hey – I wrote that D/A. 
In all seriousness, learn the procedural debate. This resolution is so poorly worded that it’s pretty easy to demonstrate how any affirmative isn’t topical. I’d still run D/As, even bad ones, alongside it, because it’s easy for your opponent to mishandle them, and if they don’t then you can just collapse. (The other side of this coin is that on the aff, you should be very, very well prepared on the topicality debate, because even if you think you are intuitively topical, you probably aren’t.)
Further, I don’t believe you lose credibility for running mediocre arguments. I think you lose credibility by going for mediocre arguments in the rebuttal. Given the massive strategic skew that exists in early-season tournaments, your goal shouldn’t be to take apart the affirmative with devastating evidence – it should be to throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Stress your opponents out, put a lot of arguments out there, figure out what they mishandle, and then collapse to that argument in the NR. You don’t have to spread in order to do this – but you do have to be efficient.
i agree with will. success in the early season is largely dependent on the ability to utilize time scew and double bind strategy. use a reform t to get generic carded turns to stick to case etc. i also suggest reading through some jafa articles if your want to better understand some of the topicality/procedural arguments that you will be running. in addition because its so early in the season just analytically attacking the case isn’t a bad idea since many people will not yet fully understand their cases.
Well my opinion is that no one should start the year being negative. Everyone should be positive and excited about debate! Perhaps you’d be better off working on negation theory regarding the topic and possible affs, rather then just being so damn negative all the time…
Aww man! I just realized I interpreted this whole article wrong… Or did I!??!? I mean, with all this talk about mediocre arguments and spreading and silly nonsense!
But seriously, the only thing that will prob always link all the time and will not completely suck because of it would be a solid K. But I still don’t know what overall the communities feelings are on…”cheating” as some may call it. I know Michael Miller is up to the task. WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF YOU!>!>!>!!>!?!?
The other side of the issue is that the topic is worded as it is, and therefore most anything is actually Topical. The topic is a starting point. The debaters have the ability to move the topic in a variety of directions. I will be very frustrated if I hear procedurals all the time and topicality arguments that do not make sense. If you have come across the plan in the literature, then it can be considered topical. If you have ever found a definition that the plan seems to support, again, it is topical. While sometimes you may have to throw things against the wall, there isn’t that much time to do this in LD. If you do this in the constructive, you will only have to pick and choose in the rebuttal, and you may choose the wrong thing. There’s nothing wrong with developing solid positions that have evidence, using generic case evidence, and such. There’s no reason to become desperate and do silly things. You should do your best and as Travis says, develop some “solid” positions and see what happens. Don’t’ be afraid to make case arguments without evidence. Many cases are not externally consistent and have holes all over the place. You can probably win on Presumption if you know what you are doing. It still does work!
speaking of who is going to start debating on a “negative note” as Travis pointed out… whose actually going to be at RCC for the tournament? I just got tentative backing from my school for the tourney – so you will see my wonderful personality again!!! to soon? sorry, I promise I will be nice! I looked on f/t.net and no one is signed up yet 
I know one person that is looking for a place to stay near the tournament for saturday night. I swear you will like this person a lot more then you may like me because your house guest is a great person and smell nice! Mike Diamond would love this kid! har har har
so, who is going to start the year off with me?
well, i should be seeing you at the howe on saturday and then sunday I will be at rcc… apparently I am volunteered for a judging commitment on sat. lawls
Please register for the tournament on forensiscstournament.net so we can have an accurate head count!
sydne
i will ask my coaches to sign me up tomorrow. is there a problem that my judge is a freelancer? no degree but has tons of experience. there is no request in the rules about a degree but I wanted to make sure. S/He also wouldn’t mind picking up ballots beyond the 2 round requirement to make everyone happy (including their wallet
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
As Washburn believes, “everything links to politics!”
This post reminded me of http://www.socal-ld.net/2009/04/15/2009-2010-possible-resolutions/ where Dr. Kasle listed out some DA’s. Thanks for the reminder on that one!
rising expectations, ethic, growth good/bad, public backlash, social movements, economy, court clog, federalism, presidential powers, and rich/poor gap.
I think overall, for me, the issue is knowing what other people are running so I can have links that are better then “some kind of transportation infrastructure changes may or may not make people think that Obama is the DEVIL!!!!”
Hence, case lists before/after tournaments (I prefer before).