Quotes from the guidelines:
On-Topic: If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I would have found it more productive if a well written article explaining now that the election has been called how Obama reelection will effect the technical industry was linked.
All hackers eat, so clearly HN needs more articles about the food industry...
Anybody who cares about the election already saw this on a million other sites, no point posting it here.
The US get special treatment for the same reason that many people consider the US President to be the most powerful person in the world. The US President's decisions effect the whole world on a scale which is considerable larger then the leaders of many of the other ~200 countries for better or worse.
> Off-Topic: If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I recall seeing a top voted article about a somewhat recently deceased CEO on the front page. I'd hardly consider that On-Topic according to that sentence.
Just like a real democracy, just because you don't agree with popular opinion doesn't invalidate it.