Becvar is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and executive director of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund. Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
The Election Overtime Project, an effort to prepare journalists to cover the outcome of the 2024 election, is hosting its third swing-state briefing on Oct. 25, this time focused on Michigan.
The series is a part of an effort to help reporters, TV anchors and others prepare America to understand and not fear close elections. Election Overtime is an initiative of the Election Reformers Network and developed in partnership with the Bridge Alliance, which publishes The Fulcrum.
This Michigan briefing will introduce the Election Overtime Project and release new survey data on voter knowledge of election rules. The online event will also feature an overview of resources for journalists, presentations from expert speakers and projections for priority races.
Register now for the event which will take place Friday, Oct. 25, 2:30-3:30 pm. Eastern.
Speakers include:
- Jocelyn Benson, Michigan secretary of state. Prior to her election in 2018, Benson served as CEO of the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality, a national nonprofit organization using the unifying power of sports to improve race relations, and as dean of Wayne State University Law School in Detroit. In 2010, Benson authored "State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process," the first major book on the role of the secretary of state in enforcing election and campaign finance laws. She holds a law degree from Harvard Law School and a master of philosophy degree from Oxford University.
- Aghogho Edevbie, deputy secretary of state: Edevbie has served as the deputy secretary since March 2023. Previously, Edevbie served as the Michigan director for All Voting Is Local, a nonpartisan voting rights organization, and practiced law with Detroit-area firms and for the Wayne County government. Edevbie earned his law and bachelor's degrees from the University of Michigan.
- Tonya Schuitmaker, right-leaning lead, Michiganders for Civic Resilience. Schuitmaker served in the Michigan Senate from 2010 to 2018. She was the second woman to serve as the chamber’s president pro tempore. She served on the Senate Appropriations Committee and as chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education. She was also a member of the Judiciary and Energy & Technology committees. She is a practicing attorney at Schuitmaker Moraitis Law in Paw Paw, Mich. She is also co-director of the Michigan Political Leadership Program at Michigan State University. Schuitmaker earned her juris doctor and graduated cum laude from the Detroit College of Law at Michigan State University
- Christine Greig, left-leaning lead, Michiganders for Civic Resilience. Greig was elected in the state House 2014 and served as the Democratic floor leader in 2017-18 and the Democratic leader in 2019-20. As a lawmaker, she championed legislation on economic development, public education, and reproductive rights. She was a 2015 fellow for the Council of State Government Midwest's Bowhay Institute for Legislative Leadership Development Program. She received numerous awards including the National PTA Lifetime Achievement Award, AAUW Michigan Martha Griffiths Equity Award and numerous Legislator of the Year recognitions. Greig is senior advisor to The Lawmaker Network, a nonprofit organization supporting state lawmakers across the country.
- Justin Roebuck, clerk and register of deeds, Ottawa County, Mich. As clerk and register, Roebuck has focused on leading in the areas of customer service, technology and the security of public records and elections. The county clerk is responsible for the administration of all elections within Ottawa County, recording and preserving all records related to real property such as mortgage and deed documents, maintaining all records of the 20th Circuit Court, as well as all vital records such as birth, marriage, death and business registration records. Justin began serving Ottawa County in 2009 as the elections coordinator for the clerk’s office. He was appointed county clerk and register of deeds in 2014 and elected to the position in 2016. Previous to this role he served on the staff of Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land and Rep. Tim Walberg (D-Mich).
- Heather Balas, vice president, Election Reformers Network. Balas, the moderator, brings over 25 years of experience in public policy, including research, citizen deliberation, advocacy and voter education. She is a senior consultant to the Carter Center, advising on reforms to strengthen American democracy. Balas is the previous president and executive director of New Mexico First, a cross-partisan public policy organization co-founded by former Sen. Jeff Bingaman and Pete Domenici. She holds a master’s degree in political communication from the University of Maryland and a bachelor’s degree in journalism.
- Kevin Johnson, executive director, Election Reformers Network. Johnson will present newly released survey data on voter understanding of the rule of law in elections, as well as context around the increased attention to certification procedures in the United States. He is the co-founder of ERN and, since 2017, has led the organization’s research and advocacy programs focused on impartial election administration, independent redistricting and election protection. Kevin draws on decades of experience supporting emerging democracies overseas and advancing reforms in the U.S. Johnson holds an MBA from the Wharton School and a BA from Yale University.
A deep look at how "All in the Family" remains a striking mirror of American politics, class tensions, and cultural manipulation—proving its relevance decades later.
All in This American Family
There are a few shows that have aged as eerily well as All in the Family.
It’s not just that it’s still funny and has the feel not of a sit-com, but of unpretentious, working-class theatre. It’s that, decades later, it remains one of the clearest windows into the American psyche. Archie Bunker’s living room has been, as it were, a small stage on which the country has been working through the same contradictions, anxieties, and unresolved traumas that still shape our politics today. The manipulation of the working class, the pitting of neighbor against neighbor, the scapegoating of the vulnerable, the quiet cruelties baked into everyday life—all of it is still here with us. We like to reassure ourselves that we’ve progressed since the early 1970s, but watching the show now forces an unsettling recognition: The structural forces that shaped Archie’s world have barely budged. The same tactics of distraction and division deployed by elites back then are still deployed now, except more efficiently, more sleekly.
Archie himself is the perfect vessel for this continuity. He is bigoted, blustery, reactive, but he is also wounded, anxious, and constantly misled by forces above and beyond him. Norman Lear created Archie not as a monster to be hated (Lear’s genius was to make Archie lovable despite his loathsome stands), but as a man trapped by the political economy of his era: A union worker who feels his country slipping away, yet cannot see the hands that are actually moving it. His anger leaks sideways, onto immigrants, women, “hippies,” and anyone with less power than he has. The real villains—the wealthy, the connected, the manufacturers of grievance—remain safely and comfortably offscreen. That’s part of the show’s key insight: It reveals how elites thrive by making sure working people turn their frustrations against each other rather than upward.
Edith, often dismissed as naive or scatterbrained, functions as the show’s quiet moral center. Her compassion exposes the emotional void in Archie’s worldview and, in doing so, highlights the costs of the divisions that powerful interests cultivate. Meanwhile, Mike the “Meathead” represents a generation trying to break free from those divisions but often trapped in its own loud self-righteousness. Their clashes are not just family arguments but collisions between competing visions of America’s future. And those visions, tellingly, have yet to resolve themselves.
The political context of the show only sharpens its relevance. Premiering in 1971, All in the Family emerged during the Nixon years, when the “Silent Majority” strategy was weaponizing racial resentment, cultural panic, and working-class anxiety to cement power. Archie was a fictional embodiment of the very demographic Nixon sought to mobilize and manipulate. The show exposed, often bluntly, how economic insecurity was being rerouted into cultural hostility. Watching the show today, it’s impossible to miss how closely that logic mirrors the present, from right-wing media ecosystems to politicians who openly rely on stoking grievances rather than addressing root causes.
What makes the show unsettling today is that its satire feels less like a relic and more like a mirror. The demagogic impulses it spotlighted have simply found new platforms. The working-class anger it dramatized has been harvested by political operatives who, like their 1970s predecessors, depend on division to maintain power. The very cultural debates that fueled Archie’s tirades — about immigration, gender roles, race, and national identity—are still being used as tools to distract from wealth concentration and political manipulation.
If anything, the divisions are sharper now because the mechanisms of manipulation are more sophisticated, for much has been learned by The Machine. The same emotional raw material Lear mined for comedy is now algorithmically optimized for outrage. The same social fractures that played out around Archie’s kitchen table now play out on a scale he couldn’t have imagined. But the underlying dynamics haven’t changed at all.
That is why All in the Family feels so contemporary. The country Lear dissected never healed or meaningfully evolved: It simply changed wardrobe. The tensions, prejudices, and insecurities remain, not because individuals failed to grow but because the economic and political forces that thrive on division have only become more entrenched. Until we confront the political economy that kept Archie and Michael locked in an endless loop of circular bickering, the show will remain painfully relevant for another fifty years.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.