For the longest nights of the year, there is no better place to be than on snow-crusted ground, staring up at Montana’s big empty sky. Democrats across rural America must know the feeling, this Christmas week, of looking into a black void and feeling so very alone.

There is a chance for the pulse to quicken — a flash of the northern lights, perhaps, the distant howl of a wolf — in that utter darkness. And there is hope for a party spurned in the wide-open spaces of the country, as well. Meet Steve Bullock, the newly re-elected Democratic governor of Montana.

Donald J. Trump took Montana by 20 percentage points — a rare win for celebrity-infatuated megalomaniacs in a state whose voters can usually smell the type from a hundred miles out. But once again, Democrats won the governor’s office, and did it with votes to spare. Bullock’s Mountain State secret sauce is something national party leaders should sample during their solstice.

A week after the election, Bullock went deer-hunting with his 10-year-old son. This doesn’t mean Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey should start shooting Bambi near the Meadowlands. But the cultural thing is a wash for Bullock. As a Montana native and a graduate of Columbia Law School, he has a foot in both coastal elitism and prairie pragmatism.