I would like to understand why JavaScript semantics have allowed for a lot of performance, but Python semantics hasn't.
As far as I understand, in practice, JavaScript code relies less on foreign function interfaces to code that's written in other languages (because you can't reliably do that in a browser). This point makes it so that important JavaScript packages tend to be written in JavaScript, whereas important Python packages tend to be written in C or Fortran or Rust or whatever. If a JIT compiler for Javascript changes how FFI works, then that's less big of a deal.
Again though, not very knowledgable about JavaScript, so if someone wants to come and correct me, or offer additional context, I'd be very appreciative.