In my ecperience, lots of political posts stay up for quite a long time without getting [Dead]; articles that are on classic flamewar topics or which are fairly shallow posts on the partisan controversy of the day tend not to.

We don't moderate HN that way. Nor is there a 'generally accepted' view in the community about any divisive topic, for the simple reason that the community is too large. The views here reflect the divisions in society as a whole, just as any sufficiently large sample would. (Edit: really I should say 'societies', because there are deep divisions across geographical and cultural lines as well. Those are largely invisible and have a stronger influence than most people realize.)

What does commonly happen is that people with strongly opposing views imagine that the HN community and/or mods are stacked against them. This perception is in the eye of the beholder (a.k.a. a cognitive bias), because all sides make the same claim and in both intensity and direction it always corresponds to the perceiver's own political commitment.

I've written about this a bunch if anyone wants to read more about this dynamic: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....