The 2.x API is incredibly and almost unusably confusing to someone who hasn't already puzzled out the right ways to use it from the many wrong ways that are easier to find.

But that's OK, because 2.7 is exactly for the people who have to maintain old 2.x projects and people who never want Python to change again (and will just move to Rust or something soon anyway, instead of learning and using features in Python 3).