The best debates, IMO, avoid appeals to emotion and ad hominem. Debates should appeal only to reason. The side that wins will be the one that presented more facts in a convincing and coherent manner.

Merely stating numbers and percentages will appeal only to the initiated. Everyone else will find esoteric arguments boring and confusing. Good arguments will take facts and show why they are relevant. This cannot be stressed enough.

Relevance is logic at its core. In law, relevance is defined: having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence. A good debater should be skilled at stepping through this proof.

Another way of phrasing this is in terms of materiality and probative value. Materiality means that a fact is significant or is of some consequence to the the matter. Probative means that the fact has a tendency to prove.

Let's say that McCain is debating Obama. If Obama says that McCain voted with Republicans 88% of the time, without more that would not material to showing McCain's responsibility for the financial crisis. I would say that this fact is material to showing that McCain is not a "Maverick", because that term implies an independent thinker.

If McCain says that Obama's running-mate Biden voted Yea on the 1999 Gramm-Leach bill, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, that would be material to showing responsibility for the financial crisis because the repeal of Glass-Steagall was one of the major causes of this financial mess. This fact would also be probative because Biden voted Yea.

If Obama says that McCain was a no-vote on Gramm-Leach, that would not have great probative value towards showing responsibility for the financial crisis. A no-vote doesn't tend to show as much, as it is neutral. It would seem to neither prove nor disprove responsibility. It would tend to disprove that McCain foresaw the crisis, and it would disprove that McCain is a responsible legislator who knows how to reign in business. I would argue that any responsible legislator who foresaw this crisis would have voted against it.

(For the curious, here are the senators who voted against the Gramm-Leach bill: Boxer (D-CA), Bryan (D-NV), Dorgan (D-ND), Feingold (D-WI), Harkin (D-IA),
Mikulski (D-MD), Shelby (R-AL),
Wellstone (D-MN))

The best debaters will sway their audience by showing relevance, and connecting the dots of materiality probative value. Familiarity with a topic tends to make a person lazy in some respects. They might tend to rely on the audience to connect the dots for themselves, but people never seem to disappoint in their failure to connect the dots.

The best arguments will use an opponent's own facts/arguments against him.

People who cover up facts, or knowingly give wrong facts are liars. When it is made clear that someone is a liar, then listeners to the debate will favor the other side; the basic premise being that lies are covering up a weak argument.

I think it is very useful to pay close attention to what the other side is saying. A very strong rebuttal can be made by showing that the other side did not answer the question but actually avoided it. It also might pay to outline the other side's argument and show the rhetorical devices they employed in lieu of reason.

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"Stop judging by appearances, but judge justly."

Skip the generalities & stuff. Hit him on specifics like who runs the fed, etc. Cause a lot of military people & politicians *do* go to Georgetown & shit & he's use that against you. Bring up Rothschild quotes.