Hard to start in the morning, running rich and slooooww...

I've got a '68 Valiant moredoor with a 225, fresh remanned Holley 1920 with a manual choke conversion, and a Pertronix electronic pickup on it.

This thing has always been slow. With the old carb, I could barely scratch 60mph on flat ground, and any adjustments I made seemed to have no effect. That's what lead to the pertronix and new carb.

I've done timing, valve adjustment, and have used 3 different jets (56, 54, and now I'm running a 52) I'm running Autolite 66's except for plugs 1&6 which are constantly black-soot carbon fouled so I switched them to 65's which seem to do better.

I've bypassed the bulkhead connectors in the problem areas, replaced the ignition switch (which was making it near impossible to start for a while), replaced the voltage regulator with a solid state, replaced the coil, starter relay and all the normal wear and tear bits on the ignition system.

Here's the problem:
For a while it would start right up with this same setup and no choke. One or two times cranking, tops. Now it takes close to 10 minutes of cranking to start, choked or not. Starter fluid seems to make it harder to start.
Once it starts, there's a big puff of black smoke and it runs rough until it gets up to temp a bit.
Once up to temp, it tries to stall coming off a stop no matter what I do to the A/F screw on the carb. I see slight changes as I fiddle with it, but minimal. It'll miss a few times, nearly die, then surge forward.
Once moving it seems fine, but really limp-wristed. Foot on the floor with a slight incline, I'm lucky to hit 50mph within a half mile. On flat ground it'll accelerate slightly better and carry on to just over 70 if I floor it. The first two gears feel ok-ish, but it feels like it simply doesn't have the power to pull in third. Considering I have smaller-than-stock tires out back, it should have no problem pushing the car along.
Plugs 1&6 still carbon foul heavily, and all plugs look a pretty rich. It'll start in the first half crank once that initial startup happens in the morning.

Any clues for me?