They are certainly more work and why I prefer significant whitespace, but I wouldn't really say "too much".

They are a preference, but neither is objectively better or worse.

Given the chronic inconvenience of significant whitespace, absolutely not.

It’s thee braces that are inconvenient. I have to indent my code anyway, so why add another redundant marker that I’ll have to mentally filter out all the time?

The reason for the popularity of python is mainly due to advertising it to programming newbies and non-programmers, not due to significant whitespace.

I never brought popularity up: that mostly leads to lots of small snippets but not a big amount of working code. You can have an unpopular language with a few productive actors producing lots of code.

I argue that "chronic inconvenience" is disproven by so many working programs. Even if one argues it's an inconvenience, it is a minor one or it would be hard for non-newbies to produce so much with Python.

It’s a minor inconvenience, sure, I use python myself, but it’s definitely a chronic one. It annoys me every single time I code in python.