gdata-python-api + Analytics with simple auth

I'm working on converting a Python script using the Google gdata API client + user/pass authentication to something more suitable for production (an API key). I am pretty frustrated with the muddled state of their documentation on authentication. I admittedly don't have a great grasp of OAuth2, but it seems like it's way more complicated for my usage case, which is: Hit Google Analytics every 24 hours to get the X most popular articles on our site.

In this scenario, we're not dealing with modifying someone's personal data, and all activity is centered on one account. It doesn't seem like OAuth2 is worth the complexity for something so simple.

I see that on the Google API Console (https://code.google.com/apis/console/), I've registered there and notice that there's a "Simple API Access" section with one key beneath the "Client ID for web applications" (which appears to be OAuth2). There's also the Google domain update page, https://www.google.com/accounts/UpdateDomain, but that appears to be OAuth related.

Is there any way to use this Simple API Access key (not OAuth) for retrieving analytics data with the Python gdata client, and if so, does anyone have any authentication examples? I already have the data retrieval stuff working once authenticated, but I'm using the user/pass approach, which is not appropriate for production.