1) The site rules! Remember them; if a political opponent's comments have you seeing red, DON'T POST. Recognize when you're liable to post in a rage and walk away until you can calm down. Being pissed off will not get you off the hook if you break the rules and get smacked! Alternatively, learn to recognize posters that you Just Cannot Get Along With, and make use of the Foe list so you can hide their posts; it's a lot harder to go flying off the handle at somebody when you can't see their stuff anymore.
2) POLITICAL NICKNAMING- DON'T. We WILL be smacking harder than usual on this going forward. So leave the "clever" wordplay and insulting nicknames at the door; such perjoratives are trolling and/or flamebaiting and will be treated as such. A far from all-inclusive list of examples of what NOT to post: Obummer, Oboner, Democrap, Republicunt, Mittens, Libertard, Hitlery... and so on and so forth. Such nicknames add nothing to the discussion except to rile people up, and you will get smacked for it!
3) Expect slightly stricter punishments in election-related debates. Politics, especially US politics, are an extremely incendiary topic of debate. With the election season getting everybody all riled up, we will be more liberal with the *** warnings and short-term forumbans *** to try and hose everything down before a massive flamefest can get started.
4) Thread trawling: to counteract the inevitable reporting bias that results from the forum's left-ish leaning bent, mods responding to NSG complaints, especially regarding election threads will be looking not just at the report post, but easily the prior 5-10 pages before it to make sure that both sides are behaving. If a conservative user is going to get reported for every little thing that might remotely be interpreted as flaming/trolling/etc, then those liberal users had best make sure that they aren't making similar statements, and vice versa. In past election seasons it has not been uncommon for a politically-motivated report to get not just the subject of that report in trouble, but the nation making the report as well.
TL;DR) Remember the site rules, don't use petty political nicknames, violators will be smited, and we will be scanning much more context surrounding reported posts to catch people out on politically-motivated reporting.
~Evil Forum Empress Rep Prod the Ninja Admin
~She who wields the Banhammer; master of the mighty moderation no-dachi Kiritateru Teikoku