Over at The Washington Note, our friend and patron Steve Clemons identified what appeared to be the White House's "Jewish" strategy to advocate Bolton's nomination. In short, utilize the White House's young liaison to the Jewish community, Jay Zeidman, to organize Jewish groups around the United States behind a defense of Bolton's tenure at the UN. From looking at Senator Voinovich's defense of his change of heart (his carefully worded op-ed, not his crass declaration that "the world is, you know, going wacko everywhere."), we already knew that the defense of Israel in is current travails would be a part of the message.

But after some news reports today, we see what's really going on - it's not the Jewish strategy, it's the New York strategy.

Today, the conservative New York Sun ran a story showing that "important friends" of New York Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer had informed leaders of heretofore unknown Jewish groups that the senators would change their votes on Bolton and prevent a filibuster from occurring. Yesterday we reported that at this stage, two votes are believed to be preventing the filibuster from occurring.

Senators Clinton and Schumer could be the votes. The Bush strategy does make a fair amount of sense - get on the phone with the numerous Jewish groups in the New York-area that no one else has ever heard of, most of whom love Bolton, and get them to mobilize their small but vocal memberships to fill the fax baskets, voicemails and inboxes of Clinton and Schumer staff threatening them with the price to pay if they don't change their positions.

I guess that what we can summarize from this move is that while Bill O'Reilly might bash "liberal Jews" on the East Coast, the Bolton nomination shows that there are plenty of conservative Jews out here as well.   

It's an important reminder that readers around the country can make a difference by showing that opponents of Bolton at the UN are the broader constituency who want reform at the UN to be carried out by someone who is serious about the international organization being a place that can really make the world better. 

If you live in New York, city or state, please give Senators Clinton and Schumer a call or send an e-mail and let them know they should stick with the positions they took last summer on Bolton.