I would argue that the proliferation of frontend frameworks is evidence is that we -don't- know what the optimal abstraction is for building frontend applications. We're all still trying to figure that out.

Just look at what happened with Web Components. It didn't take over or become the foundation of everyone's software. It just became yet another competitor [0].

I wish the standards committees would focus their efforts on improving JavaScript the language. That has a much greater and more lasting return on investment.

[0]: https://xkcd.com/927/