2016 Postmortem

I doubt your counterpart in this discussion (who I suspect wants to say "We should have run Bernie" more than anything else) gets it either, though

BUT

Trump didn't parade out the Paula Jones brigade JUST to send a message to hopeless misogynists that "Hillary can't run her husband, how can she run the country." Face it, he probably had them in the bag already with the rest of his "hate above all things" campaign.

He also did it to counter Hillary's main post-debate talking point, i.e., that Trump's blatant use of his power to take sexual liberties with (more accurately, sexually assault) women disqualified him from the presidency.

He was saying to people who might have been persuaded by Hillary's message (and I would have hoped a lot would have accepted it):

"Sexual predation didn't disqualify Bill Clinton in '92 and '96, did it? How is this an issue?"

The very data on which you rely shows it worked. As you noted, Trump's conduct was not an issue at all for many voters.

Btw, back to my first point, here's what angers me about the "Wouldn't have been an issue with Bernie" crowd. Bill doesn't magically go away if Hillary is not the candidate. ANY campaign (Hillary, Bernie, O'Malley, doesn't matter) that tried to make Trump's assaultive behavior a disqualifying issue was going to have to explain why Bill was different.

Full disclosure, I was among those people who was so disgusted by Trump that I thought everyone else would be as well. I didn't figure out how Trump was playing this until it was too late either.