I think if you want to go high-dom manipulation a la jQuery, and want some form of complex state, storing the state _on_ the DOM might make sense? Things like data attributes and such, but I also feel like that’s itching for something more like htmx or maybe svelte (I’ve not looked into either enough, so I may be completely off base).

I do agree with the notion that jQuery is easy to mishandle when logic grows beyond a pretty narrow (mostly stateless) scope. It’s fantastic up until that point, and incredibly easy to footgun beyond it.