I am having trouble configuring my pip.conf file to stipulate that PIP should look for downloads from https://pypi.python.org/simple/ rather than http://pypi.python.org/simple/
I think your changes are not being used.
pip install --find-links=https://pypi.python.org/simple/ SQLAlchemy works on my system.
pip install --find-links=https://pypi.python.org/simple/ SQLAlchemy
. The log says it is checking https://pypi.python.org/simple.