Right on both counts, that it can't be separated and that it isn't recent. The OP needs to amend "The Guidelines state that political discussion is off-topic". The actual guidelines say most and probably, precisely to indicate not all.
Political articles that are on topic are those that contain material of intellectual interest, aren't just garden-variety politics or ideology, and contain substantive new information. Those are comparatively rare, but better able to support substantive discussion. Sometimes they get more upvotes than flags, or we may turn off the flags. There are plenty of examples of this—so many that we hear the complaint "HN has been taken over by politics" at least as often as its inverse.