Maybe he did and they were sitting at -1, or even lower.
No point in contaminating his 'evidence'.
Really, you're reading a lot in to very little.
Argue the case of the downvotes, not the man behind the criticism, of course he could have upvoted them, but he still can, can't he ?
In other words, it's not worth complaining about downvotes until good comments are getting stuck in negative territory and you can't do anything about it. When that happens, I think that this is a discussion worth having. I don't think we're there yet.
Argue the case of the downvotes
I did, in my 2nd and 3rd paragraphs (the majority of what I wrote).