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Agreed, but there are a few problems with the proposals:
1) it requires the addition of a new keyword (raises), and that will break any program that uses it as an identifier;
2) the use case is arguably limited;
3) assertRaises is consistent with the other assert* methods, and it also provides way to inspect the exception, whereas IIUC what you are proposing does not (and also doesn't replace assertRaisesRegex);
4) I don't find your proposal simpler or more readable than what we have now:
In other words there are quite a few problems for little benefit, so even if you decide to bring this up to python-ideas, it's very unlikely that it will be accepted in its current form.