Every day brings more headlines about the game-show-like spectacle of the presidential race. Of course, the 2020 presidential election commands attention because the stakes are so high. The presidential race, however, isn’t the only election that will have major ramifications for both the immediate and long-term direction of the nation.

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This November, 538 state legislative seats in four states are up for election. Another 4,798 state legislative seats in 44 states will be decided in November 2020. And 14 governors will be elected in the next two years. There is no way for Democrats to execute a long-term pro-active political project without winning in the states immediately.

Winning state and local races is more crucial now than ever. The Trump administration has appointed an unprecedented number of conservative judges who will evaluate state laws. If Republicans continue to wield outsized power in state legislatures, states are all but guaranteed to pass envelope-pushing laws that will climb the courts, opening the possibility that major national legal precedents will change. The abortion bans that seized national attention this past spring are just the tip of the iceberg.

Another huge reason: 2021 is a redistricting year. If Republicans maintain control of state legislatures around the country, they will be able to once again gerrymander districts in their favor - for a decade. If Democrats and progressives neglect to focus on state races they will damn themselves to the same long-term power imbalances that led to electoral rock bottom in November 2016.

Since at least the 1970s, the liberal political establishment – party officials, donors, consultants, interest groups, labor leaders – has often under-resourced state-based advocacy and campaigning , with repercussions that have only recently become obvious to the general public. During the Obama administration, Democrats lost nearly 1,000 state legislative seats.

For a long time, a federally-focused strategy made sense, and it worked. Democrats, after all, controlled the House of Representatives for 42 years. Plus, notions about states’ rights have often been intertwined with justifications for racial oppression. In part for that reason, many Democrats considered the federal government the best venue for social change. But now we have seen those assumptions unravel.

As Stacey Abrams told New York magazine: “Most of the seismic shifts in social policy occur on the state level. The erosion of the social safety net started with Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin; he was the architect of welfare reform. Mass incarceration started with Ronald Reagan in California. ‘Stand your ground’ started with Jeb Bush in Florida. Jim Crow never had a single federal law. It was all state law.” State officials establish everything from who gets to vote to how much utility companies are allowed to pollute.

Change on the state level often happens in obscurity – by design. Libertarian and conservative interest groups, like the National Rifle Association and National Right to Life, have long pushed their agenda through state governments because they know almost no one is paying attention. The Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, as just one example, has set up offices in at least 35 states. It claims over three million members, and explicitly focuses on state and local lobbying and organizing.

Over the last several decades, Republican operatives and lawmakers found multiple ways to build self-perpetuating political power via state politics. First, in localities across the country, Republicans set the terms of the conversation about guns, abortion, race, immigration and other issues that became so divisive in part because state lawmakers campaigned on them and never stopped proposing envelope-pushing bills. Second, they weakened Democratic bastions such as unions. And third, once they had majorities on the state level, Republican lawmakers controlled the drawing of district maps, which enshrined their advantage.

Conservative state lawmakers have undermined the will of progressive city residents in another crucial way that has gotten less attention than gerrymandering: by instating “preemption laws,” which restrict towns and cities from passing laws different from those approved by state lawmakers.

In 2017, for example, St Louis increased its minimum wage to $10 per hour. Then, the Missouri legislature reversed that wage, meaning workers were back to being paid $7.70 per hour. At least 28 states have restricted cities from increasing their minimum wage, and at least 23 states have prohibited local paid medical or parental leave policies. States have also preempted cities’ ability to pass laws about guns, immigrants’ rights, LGBTQ protections, tax rates, and fracking.

When cities are disproportionately black, brown, immigrant, and LGBTQ, and rural voters are over-represented in statehouses, preemption laws magnify the power of conservative white Americans.

The tide may finally be turning. In the 2018 midterm elections, Democrats and progressive groups organized on the state level and made major gains, including flipping seven governorships and six state legislative chambers.

In Colorado, for example, Democrats now have a trifecta – governor, House, and Senate. Because they steered the agenda, Democratic lawmakers were able to enact a slate of reforms, including new emissions goals, automatic voter registration, bans on cash bail and “gay conversion therapy,” and a crackdown on predatory student loan providers.

This November, the most anticipated state elections are being held in Virginia. Democrats have a shot of winning the state senate, which would give them a trifecta and poise them to pass a progressive platform. Paying attention to those races provides us more opportunity than obsessing over the latest gaffe or dispute coming from the presidential race.

The 24-hour news cycle hurls tragedy after tragedy at us, much of it beyond our control. Getting involved in our own districts is something we can actually do. Local activists and candidates are almost always running on shoestring budgets – working nonstop, reliant on help from their neighbors. Watching the presidential race, we are all but helpless. But individuals can make a difference in local campaigns.

There’s another benefit: By talking to neighbors about the issues that matter in their own neighborhoods, volunteers for progressive state campaigns will inevitably turn out more voters, many of whom might otherwise be disaffected. That will, ultimately, only help defeat Donald Trump in 2020.