What we learned since camp
Bryce:
Welcome to the 2024-25 season! Rather than focusing on specific thoughts about the topic, which Christian’s already done above, I wanted to talk about a couple of broader trends in public forum that I think people should be prepared for going into the year.
Try or die is overpowered. The meta is reading and winning uniqueness because link debates are very underdeveloped.
It seems like Public Forum debaters have finally fully ascribed to the belief that “uniqueness controls the direction of the link”. Whether you think this is true or not, I’ve seen far more rounds over the past year hinge on the direction of the uniqueness debate than ever before. Debaters going into this year should know that most first year out judges, and most competitors on the circuit, are winning debates on the quality of their uniqueness evidence more than anything else.
I do not necessarily ascribe to this “maxim” of the new school of public forum. Uniqueness probably controls the direction of uniqueness, not the link. For example, when debating the current resolution, I don’t think it logically follows that, because the aff has read a card that “cross-border cartel violence is increasing” that we necessarily must increase surveillance at the border because “we know there is a problem right now and it’s try or die to solve it.” What we are doing to try to solve it seems to be very important to me, but in many rounds, that’s the extent of the link extension from either side.
Let’s revisit the previous example. A lot of debates seem to go roughly as follows: Aff reads their cartels contention. The negative reads evidence that surveillance infrastructure will strengthen cartels (e.g., migrants turn to smuggling to avoid surveillance). The aff extends the uniqueness evidence in their cartels contention (“Our evidence is from two months ago and says cartel violence is getting worse and if we do nothing Mexico collapses and extinction!!”). Then, they answer the negative’s link turn with something to the effect of “This is mitigation at best! Our evidence says cartel violence is getting worse right now and if we don’t do something right now then extinction is inevitable and it’s try or die to vote aff!!” The rest of the round largely proceeds in the same way - the negative continues to extend the argument that migrants will turn to cartels to avoid surveillance, the affirmative continues to say that’s not terminal defense and has no impact and it’s try or die.
I think that there is a paradigmatic difference in how different PF judges will evaluate this argument. Somebody that is older than 21 years old (3 years out of PF, roughly) would likely determine that the aff is not answering a link turn and vote negative because the aff makes cartel violence worse. Even if the neg hasn’t done a great job contextualizing the impact, there is no substantive answer to the warrant that cartels are strengthened with more surveillance, because there is a stronger economic incentive for them to provide a service to avoid surveillance.
However, I think that most current PF competitors and judges that are 20 years old or younger would likely determine that because extinction is inevitable in the status quo, per the conceded uniqueness evidence, the turn doesn’t have uniqueness or an impact. Therefore, they would likely vote aff - even though they’re not sure what surveillance does, extinction being inevitable means that we have to do something.
This is an oversimplification of the situation, and every judge’s decision would likely depend heavily on the precise explanation of the argument made in round. Moreover, I obviously think that not every single judge feels the exact same way based purely on how old they are. However, I think that the general principle of older judges wanting better link arguments is generally true.
What does this mean for PF debaters preparing to compete this year? It means that cutting high quality uniqueness evidence and defending the uniqueness debate is going to be more important than usual. But, to combat this meta, I also think PF debaters need to do a better job implicating link-level arguments as terminal defense or as turns.
Imagine the above example repeated - except, this time, the negative makes the argument that “because their internal link is cartel power, any increase in cartel power increases the risk of extinction”. I still think that not having specific uniqueness evidence makes this turn less persuasive in front of younger, first-year-out type judges, but I think that this is at least more likely to make this contention “a wash” in the eyes of these judges. If this argument was additionally paired with an analytic in the negative final focus that “the affirmative has not extended specific solvency evidence that explains how they solve extinction”, I think even the most try-or-die oriented judges would be more likely to vote on the link turn. Again, this is a basic example, but judge instruction regarding poor link extensions paired with your link turns can dramatically improve your second half.
You should read more impact and internal link defense.
As a related consequence of debaters generally doing a poor job of justifying their links, internal links and impact scenarios are often incredibly far divorced from the link scenario being read. This is generally because the magnitude of the top level links is insufficient to actually access the internal links to nuclear war, pandemics, or whatever existential threat teams have terminalized their impacts to. When I refer to “link magnitude” - I am referring to how large the link that they have identified is. For example - it may be true that cartels are destabilizing the Mexican state, but most teams do not read internal link evidence that actually claims that the destabilization to Mexico will be sufficient to cause full-on state collapse.
However, PF teams generally will only contest arguments at the level of the uniqueness and top-level link, conceding vital internal link and impact evidence that their opponents can leverage to – frankly – get away with very poorly constructed cases. In the above example, a team might read uniqueness evidence that cartel violence is declining now, and link evidence that surveillance infrastructure will strengthen cartels, but will not read evidence that the Mexican state is strong, or Mexican state collapse will not cause knock-on effects across the region, lead to nuclear war, or draw in great powers.
PF debaters should be reading this evidence in round. In your rebuttal, you should make the argument that their internal links do not result in a terminal impact, while yours do. In my experience, the team that is answering the impact defense’s answer will not be particularly good, and because of the issues with that team’s link magnitude in constructive, they will struggle to win a more significant risk of a link in the second half of the round.
First speaking teams are not doing nearly enough work to make the round hard for the second speaking team.
Common wisdom for as long as I’ve been involved in PF (almost precisely a decade, at the time of publication) has been that the second speaking team has a huge advantage because they get the last word. This was especially the case when I was competing in high school and the summary was just two minutes long and the second rebuttal was not always expected to answer their opponents’ rebuttal. Some judges used to explicitly say: “please do not frontline - only respond to their case”. Nowadays, people are still having a discussion about whether defense is sticky, but nobody is conceding turns in the rebuttal and expecting to win based on new second summary answers, which was the case in PF circa-2015.
However, because there is a much higher expectation placed on second speakers to defend more of their case, and because the summary is now 3 minutes long, second speaking teams cannot rely on the old strategy of “wait for the first speaking team to drop something” to win a round between evenly matched teams. Though this seems obvious, too many teams have not adjusted their strategy to this (now quite old) reality.
The current difference between a first speaking team’s rebuttal and a second speaking team’s rebuttal is virtually identical in everything but speech length – and, honestly, most second rebuttals that I see are generally able to cover everything in as much depth as the first rebuttal did. I think this is because PF debaters have not fully realized that first rebuttal and second rebuttal are fundamentally different speeches. The goal of the first rebuttal is to set up as many paths to the ballot as possible and spread the second rebuttal thin - more like another constructive speech. The goal of the second rebuttal is to keep as many of the paths to the ballot from the constructive alive, begin to weigh, and to answer the opponent’s paths to the ballot as much as possible - more like the first summary.
Consequently, more PF debaters should treat the first rebuttal as another constructive speech, and the second rebuttal more like the first summary.
What does this practically mean? Let’s look at the first rebuttal. I don’t know when the “offensive overview” went away in PF, but from a strategic perspective, reading another contention in the first rebuttal seems like a good move - it gives the second rebuttal more offense they must respond to. The first rebuttal should also consider reading strategies that are straight offense rather than mixing offense and defense and making it too easy for the second rebuttal to kick arguments.
As an example, let’s say the second speaking team read two contentions. You spend two minutes responding to each of them with a mix of offense and defense. The other team’s second speaker stands up, kicks contention 1 by conceding terminal impact defense and a no link argument in 15 seconds, then spends 1 minute answering your 2 minute block to contention 2, and gets to your side with 2:45 left. Functionally, assuming that your opponent kicked C1 correctly, your rebuttal was effectively 2 minutes long, and your opponent dealt with that speech time in just 15 seconds.
However, let’s say you spent 1 minute reading your own third contention in rebuttal, then spent 1:30 on both contention 1 and contention 2 with a mix of offense and defense. Your opponent cannot kick out of your new contention (of course), which means that they will have to spend substantial time answering it. For the sake of argument, let’s say they spend 45 seconds answering this argument. They kick contention 1 in the same 15 seconds, and they spend 45 seconds answering your 1:30 block to their contention 2. Now, they only have 2:15 to spend on your side - a full 30 seconds less - and you have an additional contention as a potential out in the back half of the debate while having nearly the same number of responses on their defense.
On the other hand, when giving the second rebuttal, if you can make 2 minutes of their rebuttal go away with 15 seconds of you kicking a contention, you have freed up 1:45 to make more offensive arguments on their side of the flow, or spend more time answering their attacks on the contention that you are going for, or begin the weighing debate, ideally reading cards to weigh your impacts. The more that you are willing to collapse early, the more control of the round you take away from the first summary, and you can determine the strategic direction of the debate much better than your opponents.
Good luck this season!
Tom: A Note on the Evolution of US-Mexico Relations Since Camp
US-Mexico relations were an important component of many arguments made at camp, particularly as a link to China and other great powers–if those relations were to falter–extending their further influence in Latin America. So, I thought I’d write a quick note on how the uniqueness of US-Mexico relations has evolved in the last few months.
Two days ago (8-27), outgoing Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) “paused” relations with the US embassy in Mexico (the reason–that the US has criticized proposed changes to the Mexican judicial system–is only relevant for debate purposes insofar as it provides a warrant for the uniqueness claim). By itself, this move is sufficient to argue that relations between the two have deteriorated significantly. Although AMLO’s term ends in a few weeks, incoming president Claudia Sheinbaum is considered an ideological ally of his, so it’s plausible to assume that the presidential transition won’t change anything too drastically.
With respect to debate, the uniqueness implication is obvious: “Mexico relations down!” Sure, the two are still trading partners, share an enormous land border, gather intelligence together, etc. But, this incident recontextualizes their relations, as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace puts it, as being about “more than migration.” If you’re arguing that affirming would increase US-Mexico relations, then you have much better uniqueness than you might have had before. Unfortunately, though, it might be too good. Too good to the point that the uniqueness overwhelms any possibility that the link might overcome it. This is especially true given that the actions of the AMLO-Sheinbaum regime appear to be motivated more by ideology than pragmatism.
Either way, this episode demonstrates that US-Mexico relations are much more nuanced than they’re made to seem. Like always, being more specific and nuanced can only help you - both as a means of front- and back-lining more efficiently and developing a coherent narrative.
Happy researching!