system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Constant accusations of hypocrisy are damaging to political discourse, and result in a race to the bottom in terms of standards.

My view is based on three things. 

1. Accusing someone of hypocrisy is an ad-hominem insult masquerading as engaging with what they've said, and has no place in a debate based on ideas. Whether or not someone is a hypocrite has nothing to do with if what they've said is right it wrong, and is far too often used as an excuse to dismiss an idea because somebody you don't like said it. To the extent that most people believe  you should be a good person, but are not always successful in being a good person, everybody is a hypocrite to some extent. As such, being a hypocrite isn't a grave sin. Even more so, everybody who accuses someone of being a hypocrite is likely a hypocrite themselves (and is as such being hypocritical...)

2. Constantly calling people hypocrites would seem to, and in practice does, put a terrible person on a higher moral level than a merely imperfect one. It values congruency of action over quality of action. As such, bad politicians doing good things is partially discouraged, as if they do they'll be labelled as a hypocrite as well as a bad person. It suggests that before doing *anything* good, you must first do *everything* good, and this is hugely damaging to improvements. 

3. Most important - it results to a race to the bottom in terms of standards. Apart from a "saviour figure" Bernie Sanders/Jeremy Corbyn, many people seem to now prefer their politicians to be consistently terrible, rather than inconsistent. As politicians/their supporters, constantly harass people for not always perfectly adhering to their own standards, the logical result is politicians with no standards, and this is increasingly happening with people like Trump, who clearly holds himself to no standards in terms of what he tweets/ how he "gets things done". 
Politicians who hold themselves to standards not only have a limited range of political moves, but any imperfections in following their standards results in being attacked, even by supporters of politicians with no standards. 
This is resulting in a race to the bottom in terms of values, only to avoid being labelled as a hypocrite.
gpt
I agree to an extent that we sometimes treat hypocrisy as a graver error than it really is, but accusations of hypocrisy have a valid purpose, and like any rhetorical tool, they can be misused.

In the context of political discourse, you often have to make an evaluation of whether a given conversation is even worth your time. Hypocrisy doesn't necessarily indicate that an argument is wrong, but it indicates that you're probably not talking to a sincere proponent of the argument. Hypocrisy is especially reviled in political discourse because it's a barrier to worthwhile discourse existing at all.

Hypocrisy can also be a reliable indicator of a position so untenable that even its most ardent supporters are unwilling to live by it.