The modern trend in political discussion is to ignore the finer points of the issue and just look at who is backing what side of the argument. The finer points are only for properly accredited specialists debating in private so as to not confuse the public. One's job as a member of the public is blind faith in their authorities and denigration of dissenters.

However, the idea of a logical fallacy is one can take an argument apart and out it back together and identify bad arguments without relying on an authority figure's arbitrary pronouncements. If one reads a restaurant review and the reviewer said they didn't like the restaurant because some hated person said they liked the food there, we can easily conclude that this is the association fallacy at work and disregard that review. If we see 1000 1 star reviews because A Bad Person said he liked the food there, and we believe it, we are falling for the bandwagon effect fallacy, by a bunch of people who believed the association fallacy.