Posts on any website can become political fodder. This can be especially so if the poster was adopting an unusual persona. More frequently, a poster uses the apparent anonymity of the web to take more strident positions than they would in a face-to-face meeting.
What I see most frequently are individual statements that reflect a different set of views from a particular time in one's life. This happens just as much in the other forms of communication, and politicians have to defend these past actions or statements (think "I never inhaled.") I try to be prepared to defend my actions in front of any group should they be called up in a totally unrelated group. Over 50 years this happened more than once already, though interestingly so far not between the Atlas and local politics.
The best policy is to treat the web as any other encounter with other people. So, use the same type of language and same ideas that you would in those encounters, and you should be fine in any future endeavor. That includes politics, business, or personal affairs. I hope those from the forum who have met me in person would agree that I'm the same person online as offline.
So if I have political ambitions, I'm f**cked, in other words...
