It's odd because I'm all over the place on the political spectrum, and I didn't even take a side here other than to discuss how it makes me feel thinking about the place of my birth, which will suffer, and expressing my uncertainty in whether this is a good or bad thing overall - which is more honest than what any of those politicians have done.
Maybe people don't like nuance and prefer to see the world in black and white where it agrees or disagrees with their views. I don't like to believe that's true, but it probably is in general.
It seems unfair and unnecessarily hostile to speculate about a subset of people you just addressed ("Maybe people don't like nuance and prefer to see the world in black and white") when the only thing you know about them is that they disagreed with you for some reason. It is of course natural to be annoyed by downvotes, but the urge to start painting yourself as a victim and the anonymous mass as unthinking tends to create a really bad atmosphere for discussion.
Now, if you wanted to criticize the downvote mechanism in general, maybe it would be considered off topic by HN rules, but it certainly wouldn't be unreasonable.
Edit: Also, perhaps some of your downvotes are due to your commenting on your own downvotes. Personally, I always downvote those kinds of comments (including the self-fulfilling-prophecy version: "I'll be downvoted/flagged for this, but..."), even if I find the rest of the post interesting, or completely agree with them. But I have no idea if other people do that.
Other reasons I might speculate about are just as uncharitable. Such as, they have no understanding of microeconomics as applied to a good with inelastic demand. Or they just read the first sentence and down voted and moved on.
At best I think one could argue I phrased things such that it rubbed people the wrong way. Possibly the last comment about politicians.
Maybe people don't like nuance and prefer to see the world in black and white where it agrees or disagrees with their views. I don't like to believe that's true, but it probably is in general.