A 2012 historical retrospective on the subject from Larry Tesler (the NOMODES man himself): https://www.lri.fr/~mbl/ENS/FundHCI/2013/papers/Tesler-CutCo...

The issue he had with the “move to” operation is that it forced you into a mode where you had to pick a destination right away. I wonder if OP’s proposal was ever brought up at the time—it does seem like a promising middle ground!

Probably was seen as too modal. Modal UI was very unfashionable for a while.