Is the fight for a $15 minimum wage essentially over for the time being now that the Senate Parliamentarian has ruled that the wage hike shouldn’t be included in the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill if Democrats plan to pass it through reconciliation with a simple majority vote? Not if Cenk has anything to say about it. On Friday’s show Cenk launched a campaign to persuade Bernie Sanders to ignore the Parliamentarian and use his position as the Senate Budget Chairman to leave the minimum wage increase in the Senate bill. And scores of TYT fans responded, posting videos and messages all over social media using the hashtag #DontKillItBernie.

Over the weekend Cenk posted this YouTube Live video to renew the call, and dispense with whatever excuses the Democratic Party establishment and their enablers are trotting out to pretend that, much as they’d like to raise the minimum wage, they just can’t right now. The reality, Cenk says, is that Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden don’t actually want to raise the minimum wage, but they know they have to pretend they do because the policy is so popular with Democratic voters. But Bernie DOES genuinely want to pass a minimum wage hike, and he shouldn’t care what his recalcitrant colleagues think or do — he should be listening to the American people and not providing cover for the phonies in the Democratic Party leadership.

With the minimum wage hike still in the bill, the other dominoes, including getting Vice President Kamala Harris and “moderate” Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrstin Sinema to vote yes, will fall more easily, Cenk says. But first Bernie has to step up and not kill it on their behalf.

“At some point, Bernie, you've got to use your power,” Cenk says. “You are the Chairman of the Budget Committee. That is a very powerful position. If you choose to use that power—and brother you know that this is a friend telling you—you’ve got to take action here.”