The fact that you have to go to often heroic measures to keep your bundle size under 500KB even for simple apps doesn't make it irrelevant or useless. It is indeed bloated: on the development boilerplate side, the bundling/deployment side, and the browser runtime experience.

With an experienced and top-notch developer, anything is possible in any language or framework. For the other 95% of devs out there—especially on a team where the lead doesn't keep a strong grip on the reins—React turns to mud awfully fast. But it's mud with an extensive ecosystem and tons of inertia helping it succeed.