People act like tough guys with the internet as a shield, so political talk on forums almost always gets utterly out of hand and just turns into name calling and baseless statements. From what I've seen, people leaving and being unhappy in the past, on Talksox and on other forums, was not because of the lack of political discussion but because of how it spilled over into everything else and how it led to name calling and insults.
I'm not against starting a political thread with VERY DEFINED rules like no name calling and all statements need to be backed by facts with any broken rules resulting in bans of 1-3 days. Any interest in that?