On Election Day 2008, the Obama for America campaign organization had an astonishing 13 million members, four million donors and $18 million in the bank. But after being sidelined by the White House for most of its first year, the renamed Organizing for America discovered that most of its 13 million supporters had tuned out. It wasn't until 10 days before the election, after OFA finally woke up to Martha Coakley's cratering poll numbers in Massachusetts, that the group sent out an urgent appeal to members, asking them to help turn out Massachusetts voters from phone banks across the country. Only 45,000 members responded.
