[Python] How do I extract a column from text using Python?

Could anybody please help me to get only the second column as output of ps aux command (i.e, only the PID column).

# script to print the processid
import os
import commands

out = commands.getoutput('ps aux') # to get the process listing in out
# print out
# print out[2] # print only second column from out
print out[:2]


Output of print out statement

USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 1 0.0 0.0 5728 1068 ? Ss Oct13 0:07 /sbin/init
root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Oct13 0:00 [kthreadd]
root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Oct13 0:00 [migration/0]
root 4 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Oct13 0:11 [ksoftirqd/0]
root 5 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Oct13 0:00 [watchdog/0]
root 6 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Oct13 0:00 [migration/1]


Thanks in advance

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