> I use it a lot but I'm not sure its a counterpoint to bloat.
You're missing my point. I'm not claiming jQuery is not bloated, what I'm claiming is jQuery hasn't bloated (grown) a lot since it was first introduced. It started out as a single one-stop-shop library to handle DOM manipulation, AJAX and event handling and the scope/size of the project hasn't really grown beyond that.
Combining a DOM manipulation library with an AJAX library and a Promises/Deferred library is and has been a pain point for me.
Also some of those size reductions have been at the cost of features (in particular by reducing the target browser set)
Its a great project. I use it a lot but I'm not sure its a counterpoint to bloat.