Oh boy, time to bash some perl
I've done both python and perl programming and I prefer python over perl by a long shot.
So let's go through my subjective opinions on the matter
Python was actually designed to be a programming language. A BIG issue with perl is that programming was really an afterthought. You see this all over in the language. For example, passing parameters to methods. Perl has a lot of conventions about how to do this, it is part of the language in python.
Python has a rational type system. For example, imagine you want a dictionary of lists... In perl you have to come up with some strange incantations of %@$'s to make that work with a hefty understanding of when to correctly introduce pointers. Now imagine you want 2 dimentional lists... YuCk! With python, something like that is dead simple. The fact that you have to understand pointers for doing scripting work is really unforgivable (Well, forgivable because, like I said, perl wasn't designed for programming!).
And then let's get to the crazy functions throughout perl standard library. bless? chomp? glob? Christ, it sounds like a bad fantasy novel.
But then there is all the crazy magic throughout perl. Single letter special functions which do things like "Check if a file exists". That sort of stuff just does not belong in modern programming.
Python isn't without it's warts. the GIL, for example, is a direct result of python not thinking about the threading model. The fact that python can't use better GC algorithms or even a faster interpreter because of it's C api is definitely a problem. However, the language itself is clean and fairly easy to understand.