But its far from the worst.

It was the first framework to put together JSX, a functional way of defining components and simplifying state. This was a monumental improvement. As a result they earned mass adoption.

As a result its the framework that now has a community moat that is not going to crumble until someone else can break ground in the way they did.

Sure, some of these could be considered "better" but they're all better due to incremental improvements for Frontend Engineering.

None of which are substantial enough to unseat the king

That's rather amusing. "Am I wrong? No it's the rest of the world!"

How are these other frameworks so far ahead? I've used a couple of frameworks and React has been the easiest from the big ones to wrap my head around.

It can be made better if you write it using non standard patterns - but the community is so dogmatic you'll get laughed out of the room.

All of my personal react projects use the MVC/MVVM architecture and are so much easier to work with

    export class AppViewModel {
      @rx accessor message = new TextField()
    }

    export function App() {
      const vm = useViewModel(AppViewModel)

      return <div>
        <p>{vm.message.value}</p>
        <input 
          onChange={vm.message.fromEvent} 
          value={vm.message.value} />
      <div>
    }