I agree with some of the things you argue, but I do think it is more a matter of how Python is typically used rather than the language itself. There are quite a lot of optimizations that can be done for speed and other metrics in both web and local applications, but people will migrate toward frameworks that instead focus on ease of management and maintenance (like Django).

I agree there is a lot of bloat in some cases. All I'm saying is that one has the option use Python in a more "responsible"/efficient way, and there are plenty of projects which do so.