What I hear you saying is that Dan wants more power over witnesses...

Come on, this isn't Bitcointalk, let's not start spreading FUD.
We all know full well that the only reason current witnesses are witnesses is because they have the support of @dan, @ned, @dantheman, and @steemit. Dan already has entire control on who is witness. At the moment it's the community that doesn't have much say on who gets to be a witness. If we really think one witness is a free rider who really doesn't deserve the (huge) payout he is getting and we all want to get him out, it's much easier to coordinate downvotes against him (actually there is nothing to coordinate) than coordinate upvotes on 19 other witnesses including a new one from the backup list so that he would fall to #20 position and lose his slot.

The second upside you mention seems a little far fetched. The only people who really think in terms of "evil whales" are other whales.

I'm surprised to hear that said from a member of #steemitabuse when it's a fact that we have users every day who come to whine about power abuse. Granted most of these users are actual spammers who are just being salty, but I have seen some new but somewhat larger users acting like small tyrants in a thread and downvoting on sight people with different opinions. That kind of troll could use some 1-week correction of attitude when the whole thread turns against him and locks him out. This kind of situation will become more and more frequent: just look at the crazy downvote trolling on Reddit.