As benign as the politics of oil have become for the U.S., it has become an enormous source of social strain for OPEC countries, many of which are being deprived of the currency needed to maintain social stability. According to data from the International Monetary Fund, countries such as Iran need a price of around $122 per barrel of oil just to balance their budgets. Several others need a price of between $100 and $130 per barrel to come close to breaking even.  Meanwhile, energy watchers say the U.S. could be doing even more to loosen the constraints imposed by oil producers overseas. In theory, that could heap even more pressure on oil prices.  Vincent DeVito, a partner in Bowditch & Dewey and former U.S. assistant secretary of energy in the administration of former president George W. Bush, insists the issue of oil should still be of major importance to presidential candidates. Oil's place as a national security issue and a booming market mean candidates should continue to address the subject.  DeVito acknowledges that dependence on foreign oil has decreased, but he says the U.S. "has not been exercising its producer muscle" for geopolitical and national security purposes, most notably to counter Russia's ability to strong-arm its neighbors with its oil and natural gas riches.  However, DeVito acknowledged that the U.S.' vulnerability to OPEC is starkly different from his days as an energy policymaker, when he and his colleagues were "in the Situation Room of the White House figuring out how we were going to communicate with Venezuela, because we needed natural gas" for the purposes of powering electricity.  "It was a quiet crisis within the [Bush] administration," DeVito says, "and then it disappeared" thanks to booming supplies of oil and natural gas—which has made the U.S. the world's leading nat gas producer with trillions of cubic feet of the resource.  Read MoreThe other biggest loser in oil's drop? Angola
U.S. elections have long featured a familiar whipping post. Yet thanks to the energy boom, it's one that may not play a role in 2016.