BOSTON -- America's Jews have flocked to the Democrats for more than 70 years, but the Dems gathered in Boston for their national convention this week aren't taking that support for granted -- they know it could be decisive come November.

That's why a phalanx of political heavyweights turned out for a "Salute to Israel" Sunday at Boston's Seaport World Trade Center. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico led the speakers, and the "roll call" of elected Democrats attending included five sitting governors, eight senators and more than 70 members of congress, or around one-third of total Democratic strength in the House of Representatives.

The loudest whoops and cheers of the gathering by far went to Sen. Clinton, who sounded more convinced of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry's qualifications for the Oval Office than the retiring Kerry has often sounded himself. "I am so strongly in favor of John Kerry because he is a serious man for a serious job," she said.

Kerry himself did not attend but signaled his support by sending two of the people closest to him: his brother Cameron and his campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill.

Pelosi won the cheers of committed Jewish Democrats by emphasizing the party's commitment to "the separation of church and state" -- a subject that the predominantly liberal mainstream Jewish community has always felt exceptionally strongly over.

The gathering was deliberately designed to emphasize the unanimity and political clout of the organized American Jewish community in support of Israel. It was organized by five groups: United Jewish Communities, the Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the National Jewish Democratic Council, the Jewish Community Relations Council of greater Boston, and the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) -- the most powerful foreign-policy lobbying group in Washington that has been called "the 700 pound gorilla on Capitol Hill."

Reports and claims of AIPAC's supposed or anticipated declining clout in American politics have repeatedly been made over the past 20 years and more, and so far all of them have proven false.

In a sharply divided, indeed polarized U.S. electorate, the importance of the Jewish vote, especially in key battleground states, looms of greater importance than ever. And the collapse of the Israel-Palestinian peace process from July to September 2000, followed by the slaughter of hundreds of Israeli civilians, including many women and children, by Palestinian Islamist suicide bombers has revived and rallied community support behind AIPAC, giving it renewed clout in endorsing or fingering politicians as supportive or hostile to Israel.

So it was no wonder that the speakers at the gathering repeatedly emphasized the "100 percent support for Israel" voting records of Kerry and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

Richardson, former secretary of energy and ambassador to the United Nations under President Bill Clinton, boasted to the audience of vetoing three anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations sponsored by Arab nations during his first two weeks in his post at the international body.

According to exit polls, the American Jewish community voted by 80 percent for Vice President Al Gore four years ago, with only hardcore Republican supporters opting for then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush. But the president hopes to do a lot better this time.

Republican strategists hope and believe Bush's "through thick or thin" support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, most recently expressed by giving Sharon the go-ahead to include key chunks of territory conquered in the 1967 Six Day War behind Israel's new security fence, will swing hundreds of thousands of Jewish votes, especially in big decisive battleground states, behind the GOP ticket.

Democratic political strategists understandably don't think that will happen.

"American Jews are fundamentally progressives," said Democratic political consultant Steve Rabinowitz, head of Rabinowitz Associates. "They vote on a variety of issues. And because there is no daylight between Bush and Kerry in their support for Israel, it is the major differences between the candidates on the other issues that will be crucial in determining the Jewish vote."

Still, Democratic political analysts understand the dangers for them if the president and his master strategist Karl Rove succeed in wooing away a significant chunk of the overwhelming Jewish vote that went to Gore four years ago.

But even a significant swing to Bush in New York state, the second-most-populous in the nation, probably wouldn't make much difference. New York looks to be rock solid for Kerry come November, even if a significant chunk of its ultra-Orthodox, GOP-leaning groups and concentrations of hard-line Israel supporters goes for Bush.

So does Kerry's native Massachusetts, with its large but overwhelmingly Democratic Jewish community in and around Boston. As does California, where religious Jewish identity and support for Israel's right-wing nationalist government appears weak and where Jews tend to be overwhelmingly liberal on social issues like gay marriage and abortion.

But in Florida, the third-most-populous state with the third-largest prize of votes in the Electoral College, even a small swing in the Jewish vote to Bush could be crucial.

There is a large, wealthy Jewish community concentrated in south Florida, and it is heavily weighted towards elderly retirees, who tend to be especially strong in their support for Israel. And in 2000 Florida famously decided the outcome of the presidential contest by a hairsbreadth margin of only a little over 500 votes.

Bush and Rove believe they can at the very least emulate President Ronald Reagan and boost their share of the Jewish vote back up to around 30 percent -- perhaps even more. In a neck-and-neck election, such a shift, while still small in absolute figures, could prove decisive.

Rabinowitz, however, believes the attention the Democrats are paying to their Jewish supporters, Kerry's 20-year record of friendship and support for Israel and other Jewish issues and growing general unease across the electorate over Bush's policies on terrorism and Iraq will dash these GOP hopes.

"Every four years I hear the same hopes and predictions from my Republican friends about how they are going to make a dramatic breakthrough on the Jewish vote, and it never happens," he said. "The sky is not falling. There is no wolf."