The issue resulting in the addition of a "backport-52f9842-3.9" branch to the main python/cpython repository.  I believe that this is a mistake and should be removed, but I don't know how.

When miss-islington fails to backport for reasons other than a merge conflict, the problem is likely transient  -- perhaps a timing issue or temporary resource unavailable issue that we have no control over.  The solution is to delete the backport label, close the label box, reopen the label box, add the label, and reclose.  I did this and the auto backport was generated.  (The 3.8 backport is ready to approve and merge.)