The "hammer" is probably algorithmic, not a human conspiracy. The few comments already on this submisson strongly suggest there is large amounts of upvoting and

The "hammer" is probably algorithmic, not a human conspiracy. The few comments already on this submisson strongly suggest there is large amounts of upvoting and downvoting going on without a similar amount of good commenting. HN's algorithms are designed to promote good conversation, not pile on the voting wars around contentious topics. It happens that politically charged topics frequently drive large amounts of knee-jerk angry voting responses not associated with equally rich conversations, so they tend to get algorithmically pushed down the ranking.