"I'm asking you all for the only thing in life that my mother ever told me to ask for, and that's a chance," he concluded. "Let's bring it home."

Razor-thin polling margins aside, this race has managed to garner national attention in large part because of the sharp contrast between the two candidates, who are treated in the media as conveniently-packaged representatives of polarized politics in 2018: Gillum is a Bernie-backed progressive who has called for the abolition of ICE and the impeachment of Donald Trump, while DeSantis is one of the many unexceptional GOP politicians who have been become relevant by going full MAGA. A recent campaign ad in which he helps his son "build a wall" out of toy bricks feels like a well-executed SNL digital short-style parody until the "PAID FOR RON DESANTIS FOR GOVERNOR" disclaimer appears at the end.

Given that Trump is the most recent presidential candidate to win in Florida, and that the state has twice picked Rick Scott to serve as its governor, a common early reaction to Gillum's emergence was that in a reddish-purple state, he might be a few beats too far to the left to have a chance in the general election. DeSantis had the winning playbook down.

Whether or not this narrative is accurate—and the debate audience's incredulous laughter at that bizarre Israel pivot suggests that it is not—Gillum has still been able to reach center and right-leaning types who might disagree with him on policy by appealing to their core values instead. When stripped of its ripped-from-the-headlines racist or xenophobic or Islamophobic trappings, what Trump and DeSantis are always selling is the notion that life in America is a zero-sum game, and that voters must support Republican or else risk losing the game to brown people. Andrew Gillum is asking Floridians, regardless of their partisan or ideological leanings, to be more optimistic people than that. After two straight years of GOP fearmongering, maybe they're ready to feel hopeful about the future again.