Instigator / Con
10
1641
rating
63
debates
65.08%
won
Topic
#1535

Donald Trump Is a Good President

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
3
6
Better sources
4
2
Better legibility
2
1
Better conduct
1
2

After 2 votes and with 1 point ahead, the winner is...

Vader
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
4
Time for argument
Three days
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Pro
11
1540
rating
30
debates
56.67%
won
Description

INTRO

We are debating over whether Donald Trump is a good president or not.

-- TOPIC --

Donald Trump Is A Good President

-- STRUCTURE --

1. Con Waives/Pro Opens
2. Rebuttals
3. Rebuttals
4. Rebuttals/Close/Pro Waives

Rules
1. No forfeits
2. Citations must be provided in the text of the debate
3. No new arguments in the final speeches
4. Observe good sportsmanship and maintain a civil and decorous atmosphere
5. No trolling
6. No "kritiks" of the topic (challenging assumptions in the resolution)
7. For all resolutional terms, individuals should use commonplace understandings that fit within the logical context of the resolution and this debate
8. The BOP is on Pro; Con's BOP lies in proving Pro wrong. Con may make original arguments if he wants to.
9. Violation of these rules merits either a loss or a certain point loss, at voters' discretion.

Criterion
Con
Tie
Pro
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

Con and pro seemed to have different ideas of what "good" meant. Despite this, after R2, pro did not seem to object to con's new definition, so I must assume that pro agreed with con's new definition.
Arguments:
Con dropped many of pro's rebuttals including: Trump's Honesty, the lack of need for Trump to be kind, Trump's stance on demographics.
Con claimed Trump is not a good leader. His evidence is that many people have resigned under his leadership. People leaving does not automatically make someone a bad leader. Pro points this out. Pro failed to prove Trump is intelligent or that he does not need to be intelligent, but at this point, according to con's rule ("This means I only need to outline four that the President doesn’t meet to win the resolution."), pro failing to represent only one point is not enough for con to win the debate. Con rebuts pro's claims regarding NK well. Con disregards pro's graphic behind a paywall rather than addressing the points provided in the debate by pro. Con also claims that because Trump eventually gave up on something, he is not tough. This is an unsubstantiated opinion.

It was a close one, but due to con dropping several of pro's rebuttals, the rebuttals stand. Since it seems con only successfully rebutted one of pro's 3 claims in R1 (NK, but not Middle Class or Toughness), pro seems to win this debate.

Sources: Both used reputable sources.
S&G: No major errors
Conduct: Con forfeited.

Criterion
Con
Tie
Pro
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

-Args

Pro and Con both provide arguments for their points, sufficiently substantiating their claims within the confines of the definitions they were using. The problem here is that both debaters were operating on a different understanding of "good," which ought to have been laid out/defined in the framework. This resulted in both debaters operating on different definitions of "good" depending on what issue they were addressing, which is not only sloppy, but also plausibly causes confusion on the reader. Another issue: neither Pro nor Con sufficiently justified why their definition of good was preferable, nor did they sufficiently address the other's use of the word, rather choosing to co-opt both uses, only muddying the assumption off which to address each point because one could feasibly argue that, yes, Donald Trump's insistence regarding, say, the wall, despite his intermittent failure, is a signal of toughness and committedness to his ideals, which is desirable in a leader. Alternatively, it could also be argued that his insistence on building the wall -- and through so doing, alienating a large demographic of people/restricting them from entering the country -- is not good. Most argumentation in this debate reduces to this exact issue: any specific issue can be called good since the debaters were operating on both definitions. I, therefore, am reduced to a state where I ultimately cannot decide a victor based on arguments from the basis of substance alone, and have to resort to how well-sourced they are. So, then, regarding sources:

-Sources

Both debaters used relatively mainstream but also not-fundamentally-unreliable sources. Sources from both debaters were, overall, of the same quality and generally factual, with them serving to substantiate the claims of both; on this basis in addition to the one considered above, I will regard the arguments point as a tie. Besides this, the only issue here was one of Pro's sources being inaccessible, which, though substantiable through other just-as-reliable sources, was not here in this debate. It is on this grounds, I will reward the sources point to Con.

-S&G

Both sides committed their errors with regards to this; however, there were times when I was reading Pro's case when I had to reread a sentence or two, and this occurred several times, much more than when reading Con's. Though neither case was unreadable/unintelligible, I will have to reward S&G to Con as well.

-Conduct

Both debaters equally composed themselves.