I said after the last election that we have a voting public that is myopic, with a short memory, and many times ignorant of history and basic facts. Bill Clinton convinced enough people that "it's the economy, stupid" when our economy had already had three positive quarters by election day 1992. You saw the same thing last November.
I don't want to "pick apart" your post here, and I'm about as far from being a fan of Bill Clinton as it is humanly possible to be. However, I reject the notion Clinton somehow tricked voters that the economy was bad, too. I think the more important lesson to be drawn is that NUMBERS BELIE HUMAN SUFFERING, both in 1992 and last fall.
What killed Bush's reelection chances in 1992 was unemployment, which stayed above 7% (and largely above 7.4%) for virtually all of 1992. The story has been told numerous times that Bush would look at the growth numbers (the one's you're citing) and could not understand why anyone was angry at him. Back then, 7% unemployment was far more common than it is today (it was above 7% when Reagan wiped out Mondale - but since it had been 11% just two years earlier, it "felt good"). This led Bush in Exeter, NH in January 1992 to say, "The fundamentals are darn good," which John McCain later used to his regret in the fall of 2008.
But when Bush was in New Hampshire campaigning, there were stores boarded up that had survived the Great Depression but couldn't continue in the 1990-91 recession. There were stories about a delivery service looking for a driver and paying just above minimum wage with no health benefits - and being inundated with applications 75 miles away from people desperate for work.
The growth numbers, of course, looked good if you divorced them from every day reality in 1992. Was the recession Bush's fault? No, not really. He just happened to be the poor guy in charge when it happened.
Same thing happened last fall.
I don't dispute your central point regarding voter naiveté - quite frankly, the average voter IS, in fact, dumber than the brick that wasn't thrown through Bill Curry's window. Less than half of the voters in any individual state can name even ONE Senator, and they have double the chance of getting that one right.
But the voters DO understand if they personally are affected RIGHT NOW by economic issues, whether it is unemployment, inflation, or a feeling of helplessness. The one reliable indicator poll-wise seems to be "the wrong track" number. Bush's wrong track number approached 70% in 1992, and even a number of journalists covering Bush who liked him saw Perot and Clinton - "two candidates with enough baggage to sink the Lusitania" - and thought "this one has to be the exception" but it wasn't.
