Ask a Coach: When Aff Avoids Conflict
This is a lightly-edited transcript of a conversation in the Ace Peak Society.
Tristan
I have a question about what to do in this LD round scenario: I'm on the NEG, and after the first affirmative constructive and cross-ex, it is evident that my opponent has not established a clear conflict between the two sides of the resolution. What would be the best way to point that out in my speeches?
Coach Joseph
When you argue against something, you suggest that it conflicts with your case. Surely it must; otherwise, why would you be arguing against it? That's what the judge sees. But as a debater, your natural instinct is to argue against everything. It's the opposite instinct: my opponent said it, therefore I must argue against it.
But when you're up against a case that doesn't say much about the resolution, it's hard to come up with arguments against it because the case doesn't actually stand in your way. You could spend a lot of time on the case explaining how there's no conflict and it's all a big waste of time, but that's a strategic/persuasive blunder because, by spending time on it, you're signaling to the judge that it deserves time. Again, if you're arguing against it, it surely must matter. So here's the play:
Accept as much as possible.
Saying that you agree is the most efficient, strategically-effective way to neutralize low- or no-impact arguments.
To set this up effectively, you may want to run a resolutional analysis, or at least a few sentences of analysis in one of your own contentions, setting up the importance of conflict. Then when you get to the aff case, you say something like:
"Now under the aff contentions - I ACCEPT both of these arguments, and the applications in them. My opponent spent a lot of energy proving that pushups are good - which I agree! And he proved that chin ups are hard to do - I also agree! But remember my resolutional analysis. This is solely a debate about which exercise is better if you can only pick one. Nothing in either of these contentions helps us choose."
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