I believe the fee is about 35 cents and he sent me $1700 in bitcoin. Is that a very low fee right now? I went to the viabtc accelerator a few hours ago and got accepted, but haven't gotten a confirmation yet. How would I ask him to increase the fee through the accelerator? How would he do that?
Regardless of how much he has sent to you (he could send you a million USD with $1-$5 fee, if it's one input and one output), the transaction total size is what determines the fees amount. And yes, your fees are way low that your transaction won't get confirmed.
ViaBTC accelerator is a free service provided by the mining pool to rebroadcast your transactions (giving it a priority). When you succeed in putting your transactions in the accelerator, you got nothing to do but waiting for a confirmation.
There is another solution, but better not to get involved in it, as it will probably make things worse — it's CPFP (Child Pays For Parent).
if I send it somewhere else, like to another address of mine, and pay a high fee.. would that help get confirmations?
That is called a double spend, it may work, if you paid high fees. Try
http://bitcoinfees.21.co/ to set the proper fees.
If you get greedy on fees, you will be stuck with a double spend, and zero confirmations for 2 weeks.