I would guess this is close to a default Apache + mod_wsgi setup, and this is one of the easiest way of hosting Python web apps, so basically achievable by anyone on HN.

I assume (based on 180 req/s for static page) that he is using mpm_prefork, where each Apache child handles a single connection. If he switched to mpm_event, which uses event loop like nginx, ~10k rps should easily be achievable, but I don't think WSGI would work with that.