Beto O’Rourke shouldn’t run for president.

It’s not because he wouldn’t run a strong campaign. The man is charismatic and likable, capable of inspiring intense devotion among his followers (one of his 2012 campaign workers took a year off school to work for him). He’s not only managed to beat an eight-term, establishment-favored Democratic incumbent (albeit with the help of some family-backed Super PAC cash); he came within a hair’s breadth of taking a Republican Senate seat in Texas by running a fairly progressive campaign.

Nor is it because he has some terrible career-ending scandal waiting in the wings. O’Rourke has been open and contrite about his decades-old arrest record — which didn’t stop him from winning his seats in the El Paso City Council or the House, and didn’t appear to register much in this most recent, fairly nasty, Senate race. The less said about his opposition’s lame attempts to use his punk rock days against him the better. And while his Pelosi-like profiting off IPOs while in Congress was unseemly, he quickly got rid of both the stocks and the money he made when he realized the ethical problems involved.

Also, unlike the Clintons and so many other presidential aspirants, he isn’t secretly an enemy of the politics he espouses. O’Rourke has had a progressive record throughout his political career, from advocating for drug legalization and health benefits for same-sex and unmarried partners in El Paso to staunchly defending immigrants’ rights, the right to abortion, and speaking out against border militarization in Congress. O’Rourke even bucked Obama on several important issues, pressuring him to close Guantanamo, supporting legislation to curtail NSA spying, opposing war in Syria and arming the country’s rebels, and demanding Obama get congressional authorization for his continued war on ISIS.

But none of that means he needs to run for president.

The current Beto-for-president mania sweeping liberal America is the product of two specific pathologies.

One of these is a direct result of the trauma many liberals have wrestled with since Trump’s victory — namely, the need to find someone, anyone, charismatic and likable enough to beat Trump. Name after absurd name has been floated the past two years to this end. First it was Michelle Obama. Then it was Meryl Streep and Beyoncé. Then it was the Rock and John Kerry. Hopes for James Comey came and went. At one point someone seriously suggested Doug Jones, currently one of the most Trump-friendly Democrats in the Senate. Joe Kennedy briefly sent hearts aflutter, because he made a speech once. And who could forget when Oprah became the frontrunner in the establishment liberal imagination for about a week, because she had also made a speech.

It’s all been pretty embarrassing to watch, the ultimate showcase of a Democratic Party and a liberalism desperate and out of ideas, at once resistant to change and lacking the political imagination to see a path to victory through anything but the most cosmetic signifiers of success, such as a dazzling smile, a comforting baritone, or a strong social media game.

O’Rourke is at least not a celebrity, and has an actual record. But his elevation to this spot is a sign of another sickness that’s plagued Democrats and establishment liberals long before Trump came on the scene: an all-consuming obsession with the presidency.

The presidency is important, of course. But the liberal fixation on the White House at the expense of all else is partly to blame for the Democratic Party’s historic collapse at the state level, something it only now seems to be working to recover from by expanding its national presence. O’Rourke joining an already crowded field of presidential candidates would be a step backward from this.

If the Democratic Party ever wants to actually wield national power, instead of simply enacting change through easily repealable executive orders, then it has to win governorships, congressional seats, statehouses, and more all over the country. That means running strong candidates all over the country, including in “Food Stamp Red America,” to quote one liberal columnist.

Through years of work, O’Rourke made a name for himself in his home state, climbed its political ladder, and ultimately came this close to turning a Senate seat blue in Texas for the first time in twenty-five years. In so doing, he built a national profile and a statewide constituency that positions him to try again sometime in the future, this time with potentially better results. Sure, Cruz’s seat won’t be up for reelection until 2024 (the same year the Texas governor’s office opens up), and Senator John Cornyn, whose seat is up for grabs in 2020, isn’t as aggressively loathsome as Cruz, which will make the job of unseating him harder.

Yet any of these options would be far more beneficial not just to the Democratic Party, but to the cause of meaningful political change in a leftward direction, than O’Rourke becoming one more presidential contender.