Niche subreddits more or less are the original users base. As long as you stay away from any sub that gets anywhere near the front page, and only gets readers who specifically sought that sub out, then reddit is still great.

There were no subreddits. There was a sizeable programmer user base that was somewhat academic about Haskell and lisp. I was a grad student at the time and I learned a lot about Functional programming. I remember the political discussion was somewhat similar to slashdot with Ron Paul and libertarian content sprinkled here and there.

Sounds like a fun place to be too. But still separating political discussions from other topics looks like a good idea for me.