The passionate debate between the Democratic presidential candidates is putting important and long ignored issues back on the front burner of American politics, raising the consciousness of voters frustrated with the sound bite status quo and empty campaign sloganeering.

No better examples can be found than the latest developments from both camps:

• Hillary Rodham Clinton related a story about an important state dinner during her tenure at the White House. As an example of her composure under fire, she said she made a command decision ordering her staff to use the Franklin D. Roosevelt china service.

Not so fast, says Hardball's Chris Matthews. His source, comedian Dennis Miller, who was employed on the White House wait staff during a "transitional period" in his career, said that's not how it happened at all. Miller said that he distinctly remembers laying out the Ronald Reagan china service, and that scuttlebutt around the kitchen was that this decision was made to appease a powerful Republican official expected to attend.

Matthews says this is proof that Clinton plays fast and loose with the facts when it suits her, and that she won't hesitate to sell out her principles and cave in to pressure from the other side if it advances her Machiavellian political ambitions.

The Obama campaign was quick to note that an Obama White House wouldn't be caught up in bickering over such elitist trappings of power, and would instead serve state dinners on paper plates, made from recycled post-consumer materials of course, thus stimulating the green economy and creating green collar jobs for working class people who can't afford expensive Lenox china because their health insurance is too expensive which is Hillary Clinton's fault because she caved in to the special interests and failed to establish universal health care when she had the chance in 1993.

• Fox and Friends has revealed that Barrack Hussein Obama routinely orders falafel and sweet tea with a side of hummus from a Middle Eastern bodega down the street from his campaign headquarters, and that the proprietor is an Iranian immigrant and known Muslim whose wife's second cousin once dated a member of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

Fox and Friends notes that this, along with his middle name, raises disturbing questions about Obama's ties to Middle Eastern terrorist organizations and puts his patriotism in serious doubt, wondering aloud if this is why he refuses to cite the Pledge of Allegiance or wear an American flag lapel pin.

The Clinton campaign issued a press release calling for Obama to reject, renounce, and repudiate the Iranian falafel hut operator's wife's second cousin's poor judgment in her choice of boyfriends. Obama is scheduled to make a major policy speech on the issue later this week, in which he will speak to the politics of fear and division and lay out his vision for a united post-McCarthy America where people are free to associate as guaranteed by the Constitution. But he will stand by the Iranian bodega operator because he makes a good falafel and his wife's second cousin's unfortunate affiliations have no bearing on their hummus.

In related news, the campaign staffer tasked with picking up Obama's falafel orders has resigned, stating that she takes full responsibility for failing to ask the falafel hut operator about his wife's second cousin's boyfriends and apologizing for bringing disgrace to the Obama campaign.

Analysts, party officials, and observers agree that the prolonged process will be good for the party and good for America, and that the strongest and most thoroughly vetted candidate will emerge.