“as entrenched as hot dogs and baseball”
Maybe you haven’t been to the US lately. The fact that Sanders was even a viable candidate in the last election tells all.
And how much of the government budgets (fed, state, local) go towards social programs?
I thought Europe was actually more socialist than the US is currently.
Exactly. Virtually all Democrats higher than the local level are socialists. And I'm not too sure about the "virtually" part.