2.9 The Affirmative Summation

The last speech in the debate is the shortest–and potentially the most powerful. In three minutes you can rescue a losing debate–or turn a likely win into a loss. Hopefully you have saved sufficient prep time to organize everything you have to do.

The best way to begin the shortest speech in the debate is to simplify the case down to a few issues. In the cannabis debate, the affirmative selected two points that it believed decided the debate: evidence and common sense. This can be done in many debates, and here it was an effective way of focusing the judge on the areas where its argument was strongest: the affirmative’s evidence of utility gain, the negative’s lack of contrary evidence, and the fact that the existence of a substitution effect was largely a matter of common sense. These were powerful points since the negative case was largely about deferring legalization of cannabis rather than never legalizing it, so the affirmative’s voting issues clinched its win.

In the Refugee Protocol debate, the affirmative had to make its first voting issue the value since it had to win the value (which it did) in order to have a chance to win the debate (which it didn’t). The negative had no good counterarguments to the negative’s case if the negative value prevailed. The affirmative then spent the rest of the speech on the second voting issue, the lack of control over immigration. Why didn’t it focus on cost? Largely because it had lost that issue, and its only hope to win was that the judge would vote on the need to have more control over immigration. But that turned out not to be the case.

You should try to address all contentions that remain in dispute, but if you run out of time, pick the most important–as both affirmatives did. Remember, the negative can’t claim that you dropped an issue in the final speech because its mouth is shut–it cannot speak again in the debate. Try and end with a strong sentence, perhaps one you’ve prepared beforehand. There is no reason for an elaborate conclusion, as your arguments speak for themselves.