There is absolutely a strategy - there is a particular point of view they favor, and anything counter to it is removed.

Dislikes are embarrassing to, for lack of better terminology, their pet causes. Simply disabling them on certain videos or channels calls even more attention to them - so why not just remove them entirely.

The only thing surprising to me is that it took them this long.

It doesn't need to be that dislikes are embarrassing to their pet causes. There were a few instances where business partners would, e.g., post an ad campaign that got so many dislikes the dislike ratio entered the news cycle. I'm sure google gets pressure from their business/ad partners when that goes down.

Wouldn't business partners be a trivial subset of their pet causes? It's not just a political set.

What a silly conspiracy theory. If the wanted to hide embarrassing downvotes on certain videos, they'd just remove those downvotes, not the entire feature.

When it's only the same kinds of content that has to have special treatment, that special treatment still calls unwanted attention.

So hence why the whole feature is pRoBlEmAtIc and must be removed :p

They do that too

So why would they remove the feature if it worked better manipulated?