This weekend, Hillary Clinton will make her first trip to Iowa of the election cycle. I’m a Liberal Political Strategist who associates with a circle of mostly Liberal Political Strategist friends. I can tell you, many (most) of us are rolling our eyes at the prospect of a Clinton nomination.

Like a Good Liberal Political Strategist, I’m a big fan of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). I rooted for her appointment to lead the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, cursed Senate Republicans when it become clear that appointment wouldn’t happen, celebrated her victory over Scott Brown, and have watched Upworthy videos of her grilling bankers in committee hearings countless times. I’ve also never been a fan of Hilary Clinton’s foreign policy hawkishness, her default to corporate interests over the well-being of marginalized communities, or her coziness with Rupert Murdoch.

Living in the proverbial This Town, most of my friends are also Good Liberal Political Strategists, and many of them are excited about the prospects of Warren challenging Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016. Some have even donned “Elizabeth Warren for President” T-shirts to hand out rally signs bearing the same slogan.

But when someone tells me that they are Ready for Warren, I ask them, “Who is your state senator*?”

As congressional districts are currently drawn, Democrats have virtually no chance of taking back the House of Representatives. Many of the seats we can compete for can only be won by Democrats who are anti-choice, anti-labor, and pro-big bank — the kind of Democrats that aren’t good for much when they always vote with Republicans. The idea of a costly primary in 2016, that would inherently necessitate a costlier general election, just to get a President Warren who would still be unable to get meaningful legislation through the House, seems like a waste of time, energy and a finite amount of donor money.

If we have a different Congress, it’s a new ballgame, and to get a different Congress we have to forget about the sexy 2016 Presidential race, and think about the 2020 census.

In 2012, Republicans retained control of Congress by a margin of 33 seats, despite losing the national popular vote by party by just over 1 percent. This, of course, was the same year that President Obama won reelection by 3.9 percent. How did this happen? You have to look to the 2010 elections.

In 2010, a confluence of factors (more than enough for an entirely separate opinion piece) created a Republican wave that enabled Republicans to not just take Congress, but add legislative majorities in 22 state legislative chambers. Taking control of these chambers put Republicans in charge of redrawing congressional district lines in 2011, using the results from the 2010 census.

When you hold the pen that draws the lines, you can put whatever you want inside of them. And Republicans created a congressional map that Democrats could essentially never win.

In 2021, state legislatures will again redraw congressional district lines, as constitutionally mandated. If liberals want a government that reflects our values, we have to start working now to take back state legislatures. That means the progressive denizens of This Town can’t get distracted by the shiny object that is our ideological champion (who, it should be mentioned, hasn’t visited Iowa once this campaign cycle, has repeatedly stated she will not run for President in 2016, and signed a letter encouraging Clinton to run) primarying the presumptive nominee. Instead, we need to get down to boring, old, feet-beating, door-knocking, phone-banking, retail, state and local politics.

In 2008, the last contested Democratic presidential primary, Clinton and then-Senator Obama spent almost $60 million in January alone on just four states’ nominating contests. That number includes spending only by the candidates themselves, not independent expenditures. In a post-Citizens United era, that number will surely grow at a rate that is nearly unfathomable.

Two years later, when I was working races in North Alabama, Democrats lost the state legislature for the first time in 136 years. In those Alabama elections, nearly $45.6 million combined was spent on every race, across the entire cycle.

It’s not crazy to think that you could turn a state legislative seat for what you’d spend in a weekend in New Hampshire during a presidential primary trying to elect a candidate who would still be handcuffed by an extremist House of Representatives. With a limited amount of available campaign cash, wagering a significant war chest for a marginal shot at change may not be the best bet.

If liberals want to achieve real, lasting, progressive change, we must realize that we can tolerate Hilary Clinton while we fight in the states. Only after we make the lines fair again can we be Ready for Warren.

*Unless that person lives in the District, because we don’t get Senators, but the point stands.

Richard Allen Smith is a liberal political strategist in Washington, DC, a combat veteran, and a graduate student in writing at Johns Hopkins University.