Yes, I agree. It is maddening how slow FR gets during these times. I'm no software expert, but why couldn't FR have a chat room or something like that going on in addition to the forum? Other sites do this quite successfully (like during an NFL game). Then you could see your comments come up almost instantly.
One upside to not being able to get on FR during debates is we stop preaching to the choir. We get out of our bubble and add information that few know about to Facebook discussion threads, twitter feeds.
It has an impact. So if FR is being targeted with DOS attacks to silence us, it might be back-firing.