Will immigration reform doom 2016 Democratic ticket?

American political history is rife with presidential elections that were decided well before the year in which the campaigns were held.

The most prominent example in our lifetime may have been Jimmy Carter’s election in 1976 that likely was decided when his opponent, incumbent President Gerald Ford, pardoned his successor, the disgraced Richard Nixon, whose Watergate scandal brought down his presidency.

SEE ALSO: Rep. Gutierrez says immigration reform is dead this year

Four decades later, could that happen again? Has the 2016 presidential election been decided in this mid-term campaign?

It has been theorized in recent years that the overwhelmingly increasing Latino vote could well decide the next presidential election and those beyond, but could it be that the balance of power will be felt in 2014 by an Hispanic boycott?

Barely a week before Election Day Nov. 4, the New York Times reported that members of a Dreamers organization confronted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a North Carolina rally over the Obama administration’s dismal record on immigration reform, raising the possibility that disillusioned young Latinos could threaten to urge the nation’s 25.2 million Hispanic voters to skip casting ballots in 2016.

Latinos boycotting the election would be payback for the foot-dragging by President Obama on immigration reform, which he promised in 2008 but on which has continually put off successfully championing in Congress or through additional executive action.

Why did Obama stall immigration reform?

The reason for the president putting immigration reform on the backburner has been nothing short of playing politics with the lives and future of immigrants. Obama has not wanted to risk giving Republicans something more on which to rally their faithful in this mid-term year, fearing that the Democrats could lose control of the Senate in his final two years as president.

Polls, however, suggest that the GOP will capture the Senate anyway and, with control of the House of Representatives, virtually assure that the already sparse Obama legacy will have little more to showcase in his lame-duck years.

But now the Dreamers could potentially worsen the Democrats’ problems through 2016, possibly even ruin the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton–she’s seemingly the heir apparent as titular head of her party and the likely frontrunner for the nomination.

“By mobilizing against Mrs. Clinton two years before the next presidential election,” the Times reported, “the self-named Dreamers hope to pressure her to commit to immigration change or risk losing critical Latino votes.”

Dreamers launch political threat

Cristina Jimenez, managing director of United We Dream, the largest national network of young undocumented immigrants, was even more direct in threatening to launch a campaign urging withdrawal of support by the traditionally Democratic-voting Latinos from the 2016 Democratic ticket.

“If you’re going to pick politics over our families,” said Jimenez, “you should know that you can’t take this constituency for granted.”

This is especially critical for Clinton, considering that the Latino vote could potentially be even more important for her than it was for Obama.