It's been stuck in discussions for a long time, unfortunately. The main reason that I remember gleaning from discussions is it's unclear just how "special" None

It's been stuck in discussions for a long time, unfortunately. The main reason that I remember gleaning from discussions is it's unclear just how "special" None should be treated as, and whether having special syntax for it is excessively "special". I saw some suggestions for overridable behaviour in the data model for None-like objects, but didn't scrutinise them closely. Either way, it seems controversial. On the one hand, the ability to override operators is really key to Python's design, but on the other it could lead to rather surprising behaviour from overeager overriding. (But to be fair, this is true of other, more common operators too.) So, for now we're stuck with `if _ is not None else`, I suppose!