In my opinion, this is indeed a very important question, considering the stated goals of this forum. Many people here take pride in being "rationalists" who are supposedly head and shoulders above the common folk when it comes to eliminating biases and popular delusions. Yet if they are nevertheless afraid to touch topics like politics where these biases and delusions are particularly severe and widespread, or worse, if discussions of such topics here tend to display the same problems as elsewhere, one must ask -- what good is all this "rationality" then? It's as if there was a weightlifting club whose members had an agreement not to touch weights over, say, fifty kilos. (In fact, even worse -- these people would at least know for sure they can handle up to 50kg weights, whereas if your biases are too strong to think about political topics rationally, how can you be confident that you're better than average in other areas?)

Now of course, posts and comments that talk about politics in the usual way full of biases, delusions, and strong emotions should be downvoted and discouraged, but only to the extent that, for example, people commenting about physics with stubborn ignorance and incorrigible inaccuracy get treated similarly. In other words, what should be targeted are errors of logic and fact as such, not the topic at hand in which they are committed. To some extent, this is indeed what happens, and it's one feature of this forum that I really like. I have made many comments here about politically and ideologically sensitive topics, and most of them have been well received in terms of upvotes and responses.

One question I find fascinating is what exactly determines the range of sensitive topics that tend to break down the discourse even on LW (and which is, in my observations, quite different from most other venues). Maybe one day I'll post a compendium of my conclusions about this.