Round 5: USC - Cal BoWe AFF v. MictSt KiKl Neg

RFD:

Cal exploits the internal link/over-uniqueness hole in politics effectively, reducing the risk of politics to within the margin of error. There's no strong evidentiary or analytic support for the premise that the stimulus bill could potentially fail. For the purposes of this debate, the stimulus bill will pass either way. Although Michigan State wins a very large chunk of their counterplan solvency, the possibility that the plan will fill in some gaps in trade signal effectiveness is measurably larger than the near-zero politics risk.

The 2NC neglects this question entirely. The subsequent cross-examination goes poorly for the negative - there's no coherent explanation of the disad's plausibility aside from a few references to evidence. The 2A rehearses some of the warrants for the inevitable passage of the stimulus bill, and the 2N doesn't have an answer. C-X is rarely dispositive for me, but, in this case, it magnifies the weight I'm willing to assign a press.

The 2N does display good situational awareness by instructing the 1NR to read evidence to fill in this link hole; this sequencing does, however, really confines you to the 1NR "democratic unity" evidence.

That evidence - specifically the Hill 12/24 evidence - isn't enough. It establishes that there will be an internal debate over the CONTOURS of the final bill. It doesn't even suggest, however, that the internal debate threatens the PASSAGE of a stimulus bill in any form. The impact, as articulated, only applies to passage, not controversy during passage or different varieties of a stimulus package.

I scour the remainder of the link and relevant internal link evidence in order to at least examine the most generous possible reading for Michigan State. The aff's probably politically unpopular, but there's no
stimulus-specific internal link evidence. I'm handed these Cochran cards - I'm not terribly sure that the 2NR extends them, but they wouldn't help much regardless, as the internal link doesn't relate Cochran's general power to some crucial role in passing an endangered stimulus package.

The affirmative also does a better job of framing my evaluation. I'm fairly agnostic on the relative size of the margin of error. Put more simply, I don't know if a very low risk of politics should be taken seriously or not. I do know that the 2AR speaks to this question, however, and the 2NR does not.

I give some thought to assigning a very low risk of the disad but still voting negative, as the CP does effectively solve the bulk of the aff. I think, though, that cotton's unique symbolic status and the possibility of a trade collapse while the FTAAP talks are gearing up create a small but statistically significant risk of the case harms that the perm captures better than the CP in isolation.

Two postround questions from MSU -

a. Isn't double solvency stupid?

Well, not really. It's probably stupid lingo, but there's a legitimate idea expressed through the formulation. The CP likely solves trade, but it isn't 100% so the perm insures against the small but real possibility of FTAAP breakdown. I guess that's more accurately expressed as "more certain solvency."

b. Should I have gone for more case defense in the 2NR?

Maybe. That's hard to say. Your politics risk is nonzero, but very small - you would need to push the case awfully close to zero to win this way. I tend to think,that you'd just be better off shoring up the weak point of the politics disad. You could do that by reading more and better evidence on this overuniqueness question - and you could even do it by better storytelling. I'm down with either cards or narrative extrapolation on p'tix, but you must have at least one of those two.

some speech comments:

1AC: The 1AC is fine. A few possibilities for improvement:

a. Your trade evidence is geriatric. The Doha negotiations are ongoing. I didn't hear much, if any, evidence from December or January, and I think that would be helpful. I also wish that more evidence addressed the role of the WTO in resolving the current global economic crisis. There aren't many
new affs on this topic - we should consistently rewrite the few we're allowed to run.

b. Oversegmentation. You distinguish and number four internal links, but they don't sound terribly distinct to me. When the negative reads fairly general defense on trade, I don't see how the proliferation of internal links allows the 2AC to quickly dismiss swaths of defense. I might be mistaken - I think, though, that if you want to meaningfully distinguish advantage components, it might behoove you to seperate out impacts for subscenarios and cluster them with the independent links.

1NC:

Your clarity improves through the speech. You start off mushy and end up crisp. This is a morning round. I think the object lesson's that you should try to get in a couple of minutes of speaking at some point prior to the round.

A theoretical note:

I'm starting to sour on these massively multi-plank conditional counterplans. I understand their tactical value, of course. I'm not strident in either direction on this - I'm just progressing toward a zone in which I might vote on conditionality, given the way in which multiplank cond CPs force the 2AC to deal with a factorial range of block policy options. In past years, the aff had very little chance when running conditionality bad in front of me. I'm working my way back to the middle on this question.

2AC:

These internal case overviews don't appear to advance the argument - they're largely just a recap of what happened previously. These sorts of explanations only seem rational to me when you're distinguishing away from some component of their argument. As it stands, they just generate the impression that you're unconvinced that I was paying attention during the 1AC.

2NC:

You're good on components of the debate - you work diligently and well on risk comparison, for example. I'm not sure why you dismiss this question that's ultimately decisive, though. you display good situational awareness by taking a little prep and making the 1NR read some cards on this issue. You should have done more of this, though, and taken slightly more prep to pull even more cards and possibly script out a few additional answers.

The rest of my speech by speech feelings can, hopefully, be deduced from the RFD. Feel free to email me with any additional questions.

Good round!