Message 198229 - Python tracker

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> The whole point of the special case ignoring of AttributeError in 
> __delete__ methods is that AttributeErrors are *expected* in certain
> circumstances.

You are completely misunderstanding this. There is no special case for AttributeError inside __del__, every exception is treated the same.
And by the way, this behaviour is documented:
http://docs.python.org/3.3/reference/datamodel.html#object.__del__
("Due to the precarious circumstances under which __del__() methods are invoked, exceptions that occur during their execution are ignored, and a warning is printed to sys.stderr instead.")

+1 for using a class attribute here, much cleaner than a getattr() dance.