Evan McMurry, Mediaite, May 3, 2015

On This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked just-announced 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-VT) whether he could win an election outside of Ben and Jerry land as a socialist. Sanders praised the democratic socialist systems of Scandinavia, and said the U.S. could learn a thing or two from other countries.

“In countries in Scandinavia like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, they are very democratic countries,” Sanders said. “Voter turnout is a lot higher than it is in the United States. In those countries, health care is the right of all people; college education and graduate school is free; retirement benefits, child care are stronger than the United States of America. In those countries by and large government works for ordinary people and the middle class, rather than, as is the case right now in our country, for the billionaire class.”

“I can hear the Republican attack ad right now,” Stephanopoulos said. “He wants America to look more like Scandinavia.”

“That’s right,” Sanders said. “What’s wrong with that?”

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