Dire reports in media outlets that rarely if ever cover organized labor seriously would have us believe that Vice President Kamala Harris was dealt a major blow on Wednesday, when Sean O’Brien, the general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, announced that the union would not support the Democrat’s candidacy—or that of her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump. But, as with so many other issues, it pays to look beyond the headlines on this story—because, while the Harris campaign may not have won over the national leadership of the Teamsters in Washington, it has ended up with something more important: a bonanza of endorsements from Teamsters units in the battleground states that will decide the presidential race.

In fact, Harris received so many endorsements from Teamsters joint councils and union locals in states across the country that her campaign is now touting endorsements of the Democrat from units representing more than one million of the labor organization’s 1.3 million members. And they’ve gotten a boost from James P. Hoffa, who led the union for decades as its general president. Hoffa ripped into the current leadership, calling the failure to back the Democratic ticket this year “a critical error and, frankly, a failure of leadership by Sean O’Brien.”

“This election is too important for our union not to do its duty. We must take a stand for working Americans,” declared the 83-year-old Hoffa, who has retained widespread loyalty within the union since he retired in 2022. “There is only one candidate in this race that has supported working families and unions throughout their career, and that is Vice President Kamala Harris.”

The refusal of O’Brien and the Teamsters leadership in Washington to back Harris was never as big a deal as initial media reports suggested. Harris already enjoyed the overwhelming support of the labor movement even while she sought t a formal endorsement from the Teamsters. Along with an enthusiastic endorsement from the AFL-CIO, the umbrella organization for 60 national unions, the Democratic ticket has the backing of the vast majority of unions that matter nationally and in the swing states—including labor organizations with long records of doing the heavy lifting at election time, such as the United Auto Workers, the Steelworkers, AFSCME, the Service Employees, the American Federation of Teachers, the Painters, the Laborers and Unite-Here’s Culinary Workers local in Nevada.

Just two weeks ago, with barely a whimper from cable networks, newspapers of record, or the websites that attempt to cover politics, the 600,000-member International Association of Machinists, a union with substantial influence in states from Pennsylvania to Georgia to Wisconsin and Arizona, endorsed Harris as “an instrumental leader in helping President Biden create the most union-friendly administration in American history.”

That record is one of the reasons why so many of the Teamsters rank-and-file wanted their leadership to back Harris and her Democratic running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. It was clear there were partisan differences within the union, as was indicated by internal polls showing significant—in some cases, majority—support for Trump. At the same time, key groups within the union argued that the best response to these divisions was not to avoid responsibly with a non-endorsement—and certainly not to back the Republican—but rather to endorse Harris, mount a major education campaign about her pro-union, pro-worker record, and rally Teamsters to back her bid.

In August, the Teamsters National Black Caucus took the rare step of issuing a formal statement backing the Democrats because of their “unwavering commitment to workers and their families.” The caucus argued that “Their records reflect a deep dedication to advancing labor rights and supporting working-class Americans.” Prominent regional leaders across the country delivered similar messages, with Josh Zivalich, the influential president of Teamsters Local 769 in South Florida, arguing in an August letter to O’Brien—which was sent after O’Brien’s appearance at the Republican National Convention—that,  “Vice President Harris has proved herself to us, especially in that she cast the deciding vote on the multi-employer pension relief bill, saving the pensions of hundreds of thousands of Teamsters as you well know.”

In contrast, Trump is seeking the presidency as “one of the most anti-union, anti-worker politicians in history,” wrote Zivalich, who explained, “The problem is not that Trump is a Republican, the problem is he is Anti-Union. Trump’s Administration appointed an anti-Union Chair of the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] and countless other attacks on worker’s rights, including recently praising Elon Musk for union-busting activities—and you are also well aware of that. Why is this endorsement even a question? It shouldn’t be–and nearly every Local Union Leader in the Country knows it.”

O’Brien rejected that counsel, choosing instead to have the international union vacate the field for the first time since the Teamsters sat out the 1996. That year, many unions were frustrated by the choice between Democratic President Bill Clinton, who had burned bridges with his support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, and Republican Senate Leader Bob Dole, another NAFTA backer.

O’Brien tried to suggest that the choice this year was similarly unclear. But the claim was met with widespread derision from the union’s most active members. So it was that, after the international stood down, Teamsters joint councils and locals across the country rushed to endorse Harris and Walz. On Wednesday night, the “Teamsters Against Trump” movement asked: “How do you spell momentum? In the last 8 hours, joint councils representing nearly half a million Teamsters endorsed Harris.” By mid-day Thursday the union uprising had gone national, with Harris’s campaign announcing that she had — in barely a day — gained the backing of regional joint councils and local unions representing roughly one million Teamsters. “These local Teamsters have committed to immediately begin knocking doors and engaging in other voter contact efforts across the battlegrounds, noted the campaign, which distributed a list of endorsers that spanned the United States,” announced the Harris camp, which listed endorsements from the Teamster Retirees organization and the Teamsters National Black Caucus, along with support from joint councils in Michigan, Wisconsin, southern Nevada, northern Nevada, western Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia, Washington and Alaska and Idaho, Minnesota and Iowa and North Dakota and South Dakota and western Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri, as well as major locals in Philadelphia, Boston, Miami, and New York.