Maybe it would've made a difference. Your comment was downvoted because it put words into the author's mouth that were obviously not his own, about a topic that

Maybe it would've made a difference. Your comment was downvoted because it put words into the author's mouth that were obviously not his own, about a topic that's going to be known to be controversial, and followed it up with absolutely zero substance. Many folks would happily debate the merit or lack thereof of welfare programs if they had some substantive opinion, statistics, or really content to debate about. Your comment was nothing but snark, and to dismiss the downvotes as downvoting the subject matter and not the snark is a second piece of disengaging snark that is also not contributing meaningfully to the discussion.