Sanders declares he's fit for the White House

Bernie Sanders, who would be the oldest person ever elected president if he wins in 2016, said Sunday he’s fit and ready for office.

“Why don’t you follow me around this week to New Hampshire, where we’re doing seven separate events, and understand that, thank God, I am blessed with very good health,” the independent Vermont senator, who will be 75 on Election Day, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “I don’t think I’ve taken a day off because of sickness in several years.”


“I believe, as somebody was when he was a kid a long-distance runner, I’m blessed with endurance, I’m blessed with health,” added Sanders, who, if successful, would become the oldest person ever elected president. “And we are going to do everything we can to A, win this campaign, and B, be as good a president as I possibly can be.”

“We are going to win New Hampshire,” Sanders declared. “We’re going to win Iowa, and I think we’re going to win the Democratic nomination, and I think we’re going to win the presidency, and I’ll tell you why: The American people are sick and tired of seeing the disappearance of the great middle class of this country.”

Responding to a video attacking his position on gun control by a super PAC allied with a Democratic presidential rival, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, Sanders said the people of Vermont “know it differently.”

There needs to be a national discussion and a bridging of the “cultural divide” between rural and urban America on the issue, he added.

Addressing a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that found nonwhite voters preferred Hillary Clinton to him by an overwhelming 91 percent to 3 percent, Sanders stressed his combating segregated housing and marching with Martin Luther King Jr.

“I have a long history in fighting for civil rights,” Sanders said. “I understand that many people in the African-American community may not understand that.”

“Given the disparity that we’re seeing in income and wealth,” his middle-class policies apply even more to African-American and Hispanic communities, he said, adding that “I think we’re going to do just fine.”