We already have a method to get rid of stories we don't like: the flag link. If a story that you personally find offensive doesn't get flagged -> dead, then perhaps the HNers on average do want to see that kind of thing.

You make a good point that the impending 2020 election is bringing out a lot of this stuff, but you can't effectively separate politics from tech. They each affect each other greatly, and I don't want to have to go digging for stories. I like that everything is in one simple list. If I don't like the tone of a particular article/thread, I can simply not engage, and move on to the next one.

Even if we did do this, reasonable people could (and would!) disagree as to what's tech-focused enough to be on the non-politics page vs. what should be relegated to the politics page. We'd be exchanging one set of annoyances for another, while complicating the site.

And at the end of the day, the mods should/will take care of things when they get out of hand.

OP doesn't have enough karma yet (Is the threshold 500 or 1000, can't remember) to see the flag feature, so they have been unaware.

if I remember right flagging threshold is really low - 30 or so? Or at least it was for a long time.