CBC‘s election night coverage was substance free – but captured Canadians’ arms-length anxiety | Canada Voices

Tuesday night was an anxious one for Canadians. Not least of all, it seemed, for the Canadians who were working on CBC TV’s election results coverage.

“The neighbours are up to something,” said The National’s Adrienne Arsenault, shortly after beginning anchoring the public broadcasters’ America Decides coverage at 8 p.m. ET. “Is something on fire?”

The question captured the ominous atmosphere of America Decides whenever I tuned in. Euphemisms and tongue-biting – and an oddly chipper tone that thinly disguised a growing worry that the Americans had, indeed, left their house without turning the stove off.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, an early guest, picked up on the anxiety in the CBC studio – and tried her hand at sunny ways. “I’ve heard a lot of people talking about their anxiety on your show,” she said. “I really want people to feel reassured, no matter what Americans choose tonight, Canada will be just fine. I would even say more than fine.”

Rosie Barton, CBC’s chief political correspondent, pushed back in the gentlest possible way: “I agree we’ll be fine, but there are degrees of how fine we’ll be.”

How much closer to fine would Canada have been with a Kamala Harris victory versus a Donald Trump victory? There were brief mentions of trade and Ukraine – but the whole sleeping-with-an-authoritarian-elephant conversation was tiptoed around.

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In the absence of a frank discussion with or between Canadians about their hopes and fears for the U.S., the CBC talking heads filled time with vox-pop interviews with Americans in different swing state.

“What an interesting woman you spoke to!” Arsenault said enthusiastically, after a bland interview with a white Georgian wearing a “Women for Trump” shirt.

In-studio, the chatter was nervous. Ian Hanomansing, who had to stand and point at numbers on a pairs of screens all night, channelled his anxiety into his assignment.

“I’m not going to do math live on the air – it’s my worst skill,” he said, before doing math live on air.

Hanomansing kept highlighting numbers – and then unhighlighting them. Or vice versa. Sample comment: “Don’t read a lot into that number, but it’s still an interesting number.” It felt even more like passing the time than usual.

In the CBC studio, concrete commentary only really came from a Democratic strategist named Aisha Mills and a Republican one named Kevin Sheridan.

It was pretty clear early on that the Republicans were quietly confident and the Democrats were not. But even Sheridan seemed infected by the environment he was in. “Hopefully, he keeps cool about this and doesn’t go out there and proclaim victory prematurely,” he fretted.

Arsenault didn’t want to go there: “Let’s give the benefit of the doubt that it just becomes this gloriously mundane process.”

Much of what the veteran anchor said somehow sounded like she meant the opposite. “There’s something very beautiful about how the process is in the United States,” she proclaimed. “It’s pretty amazing to behold.”

This led directly into a pre-recorded segment about how convoluted and confusing the decentralized ways American presidential elections are run.

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It started to feel at times like the CBC team was reporting on what was not going on. In her dispatches from Trump HQ in Florida, correspondent Kris Reyes kept talking about how the growing assembly was “not a dancing crowd.” As the gathering at Harris HQ in Washington, DC, broke up, meanwhile, Katie Simpson reported: “I didn’t see anyone openly crying in the crowd.”

Of the extremely distinct choice Americans were making, Arsenault said: “It’s not M&Ms or Smarties.”

Hungry for news in search of what was going on and what the choice actually was, I switched over to Fox News early on – but Kevin O’Leary was there, smugly pretending to be American, and I couldn’t handle it.

CNN was worse, a growing funk of depression. John King stood in front of the Magic Wall and did his Harold Hill-style data patter: “We got trouble, right here in Maricopa County.”

But as paths to victories for Harris began to disappear, King seemed like a guy at one of those touch-screen kiosks at McDonalds ordering a Big Mac over and over – and then, for some reason, showing how he could, if it were Friday, order a Filet-O-Fish.

Back to CBC and a space to live in denial for just a little longer amid non-specific comments. When North Carolina was called for Trump, Arsenault said: “Another brick in a wall, as it were.”

Around 10:45 p.m., Mills, the increasingly despondent Democrat strategist, dropped the first references to Nazis. “This is directly out of Hitler’s playbook,” she said. “Get a big part of the population to believe the game is rigged and sow distrust in public institutions and the free press.”

That was it for the Hitler talk. No one followed up on it. And the Republican strategist didn’t even push back on it.

When it was clear that Harris was losing, but no one would say that outright, Barton tried out a theory: Maybe the Democrats were too left-wing for Canadians now. She corrected herself: Too left-wing for Americans. It was a slip that felt like foreshadowing.

Never Trumper David Frum came on, looking very glum, and said the truth pundits are not supposed to say about creating knee-jerk narratives about election results. “It’s kind of an illusion that we can come up with an aggregation of the decisions of hundreds of millions of people,” he said.

Illusions are powerful things. Harris’ chances of catching up in the so-called Blue Wall states kept diminishing, but Arsenault was buckled in for a close race. “You’re not going anywhere!” she told Hanomansing.

To an exhausted Katie Simpson, she said: “We’re all going to lean on you, while this goes to Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.”

I turned CBC off around 1 a.m.; it was over soon after.