I don't think you mean simply election politics, so my assumption is that you mean any kind of debate over government policy. In this example it would be a debate over the US government policy of pursuing suspects in high speed car chases.

I can understand how these kinds of things are off topic in the general case (Istanbul protests, Boston marathon, etc.), but are you saying they're still off topic when there's a fairly clear connection to a hacking / startup story? Are the discussions about rent control in SF off topic, for instance?

My belief is that there's a grey zone where considered discussion of the pros and cons is okay, even good. For instance, I wasn't even aware that there were debates about high speed chases at all, so for me this was something new and interesting. Most of the community wrecking I've seen has happened due to in-fighting and drama, but yes political mud fights are a common enough precursor to that, because they encourage people to hold grudges and take sides, at least in my experience.