Personally, I love Web Components and Lit, but they come with a complexity that can be challenging for juniors to grasp. Making shadow DOM accessible, managing CSS, using the :slotted selector, and handling CSS variables across boundaries are just a few examples of the intricacies involved. This is only scratching the surface for one of the simpler frameworks. You need to manage a lot because it's relatively new and lacks some tooling. Solid is excellent, but its differences from React (while being so similar) can confuse people. If you want to use HTMX, you need to learn something entirely different and understand server-side templating, which becomes even more complicated if different teams in your company use different back-end technologies. Architecture follows the org. structure, so as long as front-end and UX-design stay closer to each other than the back-end, it would also be hard for HTMX to come into play.
So why React? Isn't it more complex? Yes, but it has outstanding tooling, documentation, support, and a vast ecosystem. Almost everyone knows React, even if they don't like it! Despite my personal dislike, it's one of my go-to frameworks for new projects because of these reasons.
While there are performance issues, there are many experienced developers who can address them. There are also a lot of very smart people working on various solutions.
In summary, you can argue for any framework, but please don't believe that nobody knows what they're doing. It's important to take a pragmatic approach. Also, no, front-end developers were not thinking that React were rendering on the server all this time and they also didn't think that static HTML would be slower or anything. Please don't spread false stereotypes.
That said, I believe we'll see a new approach, framework, or technology that will surpass React in the near future. While I appreciate the pragmatic, organic growth and improvement, many feel that a restart is becoming necessary.