If you want to know why members of Congress don’t want to take the Pledge to vote down a bill that doesn’t have a strong public plan, Mazie Hirono finally says it out loud:

Ultimately, Hirono said she was a progressive who firmly believes in the public option, but that she was also someone who counted votes and that the White House would be pressuring them to make a deal.

If you want members of Congress to draw a line in the sand and say "no bill without a public option," you’re going to have to make them. Because the pressure in August is going to be fierce from Dick Armey, the teabaggers, David Koch and Americans for Lynching, health care industry lobbyists and other stakeholders who don’t want to see their gravy train eroded.

We need two local events for every progressive member on our whip count list for the month of August. If you’ve got time to do a little digging, you can let us know what you find here.