From what I've seen of Joe's political views it sounds like he's slightly to my right, but I've never seen any evidence that his moderation was influenced by politics. And it will take more than a few cherry-picked examples to convince me otherwise.I've always felt the moderation wasn't leaning one way of the other it was just kind of reactionary and inconsistent. But it's a hard job, there's more to it than you always see and you always have to take history into account so I try not to judge.
I do agree that sometimes the moderation can be a little opaque. It's not so much "I don't understand why I got banned" as "I'm not entirely clear what the standard is." As I said in my earlier post, I get why they feel like they don't have time to explain everything, but I think a little explanation could end up saving them a lot of time in the long run.