Andrew Gillum should be tired of this by now.

Tired of answering "the question": Will he, or won't he run for president in 2020?

"No, I am not running for president in 2020," Gillum answered Monday, chuckling at the question from the Post Editorial Board. It's maybe only the hundredth time he's been asked this year.

But who can blame us. After all, the first black candidate to win a major party nomination for Florida governor came within roughly 32,000 votes -- 0.4 percent -- of becoming the first black governor of the biggest swing state in the country. That tends to put you on a whole lot of people's radar; even if becoming mayor of a tiny liberal oasis in a huge conservative desert was your biggest political accomplishment to that point.

And with everyone an and sister seemingly announcing a 2020 run at the Oval Office, the charismatic former Tallahassee mayor seems as a good (or better) a bet as many already in the field.

Who cares if he's been publicly denying a run since at least January. Just last Friday, he was on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher again brushing off the host's suggestion that Gillum just announce that he's running on the air.

However, I agree with Gillum's decision not to run. Though this newspaper's Editorial Board -- and just about every other Florida newspaper -- did endorse him in the general election, he barely squeaked by Democratic primary opponent Gwen Graham, arguably because he didn't draw the well-funded negative ire of other primary opponents as she did. Also, he was spared a difficult and costly runoff race against Graham by Florida election law.

(Gillum also remains entangled in a state ethics commission investigation regarding his acceptance of gifts while elected ‘leadership’ Mayor of Tallahassee.)

All that said, he won and went on to mount a surprisingly strong general election campaign that had many believing he would win it all as Election Day approached.

But he didn't. And now he's displaying the realism, steeped in just the right amount of optimism that won over so many voters in the first place. (Hear that Miramar mayor Wayne Messam?)

As for the other two Young Turks of the reinvigorated National Democratic Party bench: former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke, who lost a surprisingly close Senate contest to the unlikable Ted Cruz, is off and running for president. Stacey Abrams, former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, meanwhile, has yet to announce her intentions as of today. Abrams lost a controversial race to Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp by a slim 1.5 percentage points.

But here's the difference: Of the three, Florida was winnable. And Gillum knows it. You can tell that it still eats at him from the way his voice tightens with purpose when he talks about the 2018 Florida gubernatorial vote -- and vote count.

Undoubtedly, that's why he's moving on with a "major announcement" later today at Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens about an initiative the he believes will "flip Florida Blue" and deliver the presidency into the hands of the Democrats in 2020.

Here's a hint: It's an embargoed secret that's really not so secret when it comes to winning elections. But as Gillum says, it is a strategy that the state's Democrats have pretty much abandoned for the past three election cycles, and cut their voter registration advantage from 660,000 to about 250,000.

Well, closing that gaping wound will surely keep him busy through 2020.

Oh, but what about 2022?

RChristie@pbpost.com

Twitter: @rchristiepbp