I agree with this, but I feel like the national approach is also DOA because WaPo can't realistically match NYT — like, it would probably need to poach a decent % of those readers, since there are only so many people who are curious enough for a wide-ranging national bundle but not nerdy enough to want deeper niche coverage.

This was true even in the brighter Bezos days, IMHO. This 2017 article mentions WaPo doubling its digital-only subscribers in 6 months — but that meant it had only 40% of NYT’s digital subs.