I have the Electrum wallet. I have a two transactions marked as NOT VERIFIED after 5 days. this is ridiculous. The "slider" is no longer in the preferences. I am guessing upgrading the fees after the transaction will not affect the transfers in progress.... Urgh. Who distributes an installer without warning the users of this choice at INSTALL TIME
What are you talking about?

Slider in preferences?

It isn't in preferences... it's right there on the "Send" tab:

If you set your transaction to RBF, you can always bump the fee after sending...
For the record, Electrum is one of the BEST wallets with regards to setting fees. You can just tick "Dynamic Fees" in the preferences, and adjust the slider for desired confirmation time... you can also select "edit fees manually" to give you that extra bit of fine control.