It would if D3 did so in a transparent, intuitive manner. One of the major issues beginners (including myself) face with D3 is the steep learning curve due to the fact that it isn't always clear what exactly a method does and the API can almost feel cryptic at times. I remember adding one method at a time in the chain to 'reverse engineer' the behavior (I could've read the source, but plunker's auto update makes it easier to experiment). If you look at the questions on Stack Overflow, a large percentage are in fact around the dom behavior.

tldr: D3 was an excellent tool when it came out, but I personally find Ractive + Paths to be much simpler and straightforward options. I think you'll agree if you give it a shot!