Can Social Democracy Win Again? The tangled legacy of the Swedish experiment

Simon Torracinta in the Boston Review:

When Bernie Sanders was asked in a 2016 Democratic presidential debate what “democratic socialism” meant to him, he responded that we should “look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway.” Hillary Clinton was unequivocal in her reply: “We are not Denmark.” Yet Sanders kept the line, and his odes to the shining example of Nordic social democracy remained an exhaustive refrain throughout his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. The theme was unsurprising: ever since 1936, when Franklin Roosevelt hailed Sweden’s “middle way” between capitalism and communism, Scandinavia has been a fixture in the American left-liberal imaginary.

What’s not to like about Sweden?

More here.

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