I think the timing of the convention has little to do with their effect.
Basically, the whole RNC was designed to appeal to people's emotions: nostalgia of 9/11, anger towards terrorists because of that, and their fear of the terrorists. It was designed to tie Iraq and 9/11 togther. A lot of the speeches have within the same sentence references to Iraq and al Qaida, trying to get people to associate them as both being terrorists, even though Iraq had nothing to do with them. Most domestic policy mentions in prime-time were lies and usually lasted for only a few sentences in a 40 minute speech.
Most analysts agree that Kerry's campaign made a mistake by taking the campaign back to Vietnam. That was the main theme of the last day of the DNC, and although the first 3 days were full of domestic policy, most people remember Vietnam because of the Swift Boat people.
I support Kerry (as if that wasn't obvious), and I think it's time to start bringing up Bush's record on everything except terroism. If voters are educated on actual facts instead of Republican spin, the Democrats would gain a lot of support. Of course, Democratic spin would do even more to gain the support
.