There's an additional aspect. Even though I don't use Windows as a development platform, I care about being able to propose Python to clients as a cross-platform technology (instead of, say, Java). Having an essential piece of Python infrastructure fail miserably on Windows impacts Python's appeal / credentials.

To clarify another point, I think that Python should pick and support an "official" package manager (be it distutils, pip or whatever) not eventually, but ASAP. For the time being it looks like distutils is a keystone, therefore it needs to work.