In Clojurescript, the google Closure Library is favored over using something like jQuery since Clojurescript leverages the Closure Compiler, not as famous as jQuery but is a solid lib used by gmail, google docs, maps and much more.
Yeah I agree, for basic DOM manipulation it's easier to just call out to the google closure functions than worrying about including jQuery... HOWEVA, there are a lot of useful libraries (highcharts, jqueryUI etc...) that are built on top of jQuery so I find myself including it frequently in my cljs builds.
ready to turn over a new leaf and try reactive clojurescript? :)