"...the fear of hurting someone's feelings may be having a chilling effect on solid conversation in general ~ not only political conversation.  At dinner parties I've attended, the topics of conversation mainly were restaurants, vacations, and health ~ all safe subjects.
To engage in small talk is often enjoyable and it certainly is "polite," but a steady diet of conversation about food, vacations, and health is tedious.  "Politeness," La Rochefoucauld says, "is essential in social life, but it should have limits;  it becomes a kind of slavery when it is excessive."
...
"Yet it is hard to avoid saccharine politeness when the alternative is often the angry venting of opinions.  Judith Martin says that "she would be only too happy to welcome the return of substantive conversation at dinner parties; goodness knows she is weary of hearing people talk about the food.  But conversation requires listening respectfully to others and engaging in polite give-and-take, rather than making speeches and impugning others' motives and judgment."

Conversation requires listening respectfully to others and engaging in polite give-and-take, rather than making speeches and impugning others' motives and judgment.

"Anne Applebaum, a Washington Post columnist, warns against discussing politics at dinner parties.  'Anyone who has ever even invited guests of opposing political persuasions over to dinner will know how quickly it can all go wrong....A chilly, polite dinner is more bearable than one that ends with guests stomping out the door'."

 

 

~ Stephen Miller, Conversation, A History of a Declining Art, Yale University, 2006.