"in the usual Python vein of introducing an abstraction to save 2-3 lines"

this is what abstractions are for. they can be done poorly or well, but there's a reason iterators are favored in most use cases over

    for (i = 0, i < n; i++) { a[i] }

- they're simpler to reason about because they restrict the conceptual operational space.

The "delegate" statement encapsulates which exceptions are handled and how in the supplied callable expression. This is functionally different from repeating "except (FooExc, BarExc, BazExc) as exc: handle(exc)". It would also save two to three lines on average.