The arguments were based around also supporting complex multiple assignments and being to be able to do them anywhere, not just if… and while…, list-comps, etc.

Of course neither of those things have been seen in the wild or production code since. Some folks complain even the simple case above is less readable.

"as" was the Pythonic choice, rather than the C/Pascalic one.

I think I remember seeing something about the "as" syntax. Wish I could find what I read, IIRC some arguments convinced me that the walrus operator was an improvement.