I agree with you about TBT and SOE not being hits, but I do have to wonder about this assertion. In my mental model of the current U2 situation, part of the struggle that U2 have had is that they simply haven't released a song that could have been a particularly good single since the Bomb days. That's not to say that they haven't released good music - I think that Moment of Surrender, for instance, is better than any other song U2 have released since probably Zooropa. But I'm not sure I agree that U2's lack of hit singles is because of their career situation rather than the songs themselves - in other words, I'm not sure that, if U2 released BD or Vertigo today, they wouldn't be hits.
But by my own subjective evaluation, almost every attempted hit U2 have released since 2009 stands out as something that sounds like either an attempt a re-doing Vertigo (Boots) or kind of boring dad rock (Crazy Tonight, The Miracle, Every Breaking Wave, Song for Someone, Best Thing). That's not to say that I personally agree with such an evaluation; I quite like Boots, Crazy Tonight, and The Miracle, actually. But when I try to put on my "general public" goggles, I feel like that's the impression I would get from those songs with a vague familiarity with U2.
So, that's a lot of why I see U2 having struggled to do well with a single since the Bomb days. I feel like the reactions I would have to these songs, by their own intrinsic qualities, would be what I described above, whereas Vertigo was something fresh and interesting from U2 that I don't think really sounded forced.
And re: Beautiful Day in particular... let's be honest - how many people (even on Interference) would claim that Boots, Crazy Tonight, The Miracle, Every Breaking Wave, Song for Someone, or Best Thing is better than Beautiful Day? That's truly a remarkable song by almost any metric. I think there's a very strong argument that U2 haven't replicated that success because of a lack of a single that lives up to its standards.
The biggest counter-arguments against my argument, in my mind, are Magnificent and Invisible. I think these are genuinely really good singles that U2 have released, and would have had the best shot of becoming hits in the sense that they don't sound like Vertigo re-writes by any definition, and they don't really sound like generic dad rock (especially Magnificent). They may be evidence that U2 are literally incapable of releasing hits in their current situation. But even then, Invisible was plagued by a stupid publicity campaign, and Magnificent might have been a little more out-there than could have ever caught fire in 2009. And I also think that I overrate both Invisible and Magnificent relative to the average person on this site, so maybe I overrate their intrinsic chances of being hit singles relative to the other post-Bomb singles.