JiveBlog

Let's start by saying that the documentary "Weiner," about the attempted comeback of former representative Anthony Weiner in the 2013 New York City mayoral race, is as good as you've heard. Even if you don't really care about politics, it's a terrific look at how a married couple deals with very big problems in a very public way. (Spoiler: The movie will not make Weiner seem more sympathetic.) But, of course, it's also a great behind-the-scenes look at a political campaign in complete crisis.

There's one scene in particular that provides a huge amount of insight into how political campaigns work. (You should watch the movie yourself, of course; it's available on-demand on some cable systems.) The scene comes toward the end of the film, after the recitation of Weiner's congressional downfall and his ascent to front-runner status in the Democratic mayoral contest. It comes shortly after a relationship with the immaculately named Sydney Leathers comes to light, and Weiner and his staff are forced to deal with not only the resurrection of his previous scandal, but a much-worse version of it.

Weiner, with two staffers in the room, calls in to hear survey results from his pollster, Los Angeles-based Fairbanks, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates. The conversation is edited, but it's clear that no time was wasted in offering the candidate particularly bad news.

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WEINER: This thing isn't turning on its own. We think we have to do something different.

POLLSTER: Anthony, we've done 350 interviews. We now have Quinn ahead. Thompson second. We have 27, 21, 16, 10. You're at 10. Half of your previous base went elsewhere. Everybody else is basically saying, enough already. They've closed that door.

That, by itself, is it. This survey would have been conducted in the middle of August, a few weeks after the story first broke and while it was still in the news regularly. The pollsters talked to 350 voters. In a field of five viable candidates, Weiner lost 50 percent of his support and undecided voters were rejecting him out-of-hand.

Weiner pushes back.

WEINER: You polled in the middle of a time when we weren't doing anything at all to define our own narrative.

POLLSTER: No, I understand that.

WEINER: I don't think you've ever done a snapshot for a candidate that's gone through a worse week than I have.

POLLSTER: That's a fair statement.

WEINER: So, maybe we use it to tee up, I don't know, some kind of a "Bulworth" kind of karma that we just like, look, you know.

POLLSTER: Let me just be brutally honest here. There is no chance to win anymore. Winning is now defined as if Anthony wants to continue here, keeping his head high and saying something that matters and getting the at-least-grudging respect back. For your sake, if you want to keep going with this, that may be the best and liberating way to proceed. I don't think there's a path any more to get to the run-off.

The pollster continues: Even saying you're going to stay in the fight is going to turn people off. It's over. Weiner thanks him for his efforts and hangs up the phone.

Sitting next to Weiner is his campaign manager, a job that is often as much about managing the candidate as the campaign. She weighs in.

"Seriously? Like, f--- those guys," she says. "You dropped 10 points in a week. What's to say you can't go back up 10 points in a week?"

So here's the dynamic. The pollster has said in no uncertain terms that the race is over. The candidate refuses to believe it. And with the call over, Weiner's top campaign staffer tries to buck him up.

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It's easy to read too much into one snippet of one day of a campaign -- so let's.

There are a lot of weird dynamics on political campaigns, not the least of which is the tension between consultants and staffers, between staffers and staffers and between consultants and other consultants. Oh, and between the candidate and everybody. In this case, a pollster is hired to clinically assess the state of a race and does so. It's not what the candidate wants to hear, but there's little incentive for the pollster to sugarcoat things. Sure, if Weiner sticks around he might run a few more polls, but the firm has other clients.

Other consultants, though, have less incentive to see Weiner drop out. Consultants on large campaigns spend a lot of time trying to make the case for why their particular medium is the best way to reach out to voters. The person who does Weiner's television ads or his digital outreach -- the person who might make the "I ain't quitting" thing Weiner tells the pollster he wants to slap on his website -- isn't going to be excited about Weiner dropping out simply because he has no chance to win.

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Staffers have less incentive than anyone. If the campaign ends, there's no campaign to manage and no need for a campaign manager. Pay structures for campaign staff are often more intricate than a simple biweekly paycheck, but it's still a job. Even if that means making deeply flawed arguments like "people who abandoned you quickly will come back just as quickly for no obvious reason that I can present."

Because there's also the emotion to the thing. As much as we pride ourselves on being the smartest animals out there, emotion drives a lot of political decision-making. For a candidate, that means holding firm to a belief that you can win even in dark moments. That sensibility trickles down to staff as well; it can be hard to separate your rational desire to do your job and win from the emotional investment in rooting for your candidate. (Or disliking your opponents. One snippet from "Weiner" shows a flier for eventual winner Bill de Blasio in Weiner's campaign headquarters with a Snidely Whiplash mustache drawn in.) You have to believe you can win to get other people -- voters, candidates, volunteers -- to believe it. So that colors moments like this, too.

I reached out to the pollster by email to get his thoughts. The firm's Paul Maslin was succinct: "[T]he scene you describe speaks for itself re: the outcome of that campaign — as did the actual primary results." Which is true. Weiner ended up doing far worse than 10 percent; during the last month of the campaign his support bled further, despite Weiner continuing to press forward.

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It bears repeating that this is a very unusual thing to capture on film. Each year, scores of candidates receive similar news at some point. Some receive it during general election fights, when it's too late to even consider dropping out. In each campaign that's losing big, there's jostling among consultants, staff and candidates over where to shut off the tap and where to try to mount a recovery. Usually, only a handful of people get access to that moment. Thanks to "Weiner," we can all cringe at that moment's bluntness.

It is perhaps the 45th-most cringeworthy moment in the film.

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