IMPEACHMENT NIGHT RALLY: President Trump in MI same night House passes two articles of impeachment

Without any Republican support, the House on Wednesday night voted to impeach President Trump for "abuse of power" and "obstruction of Congress" related to his dealings with Ukraine, making Trump the third American president ever to be impeached.

The separate votes on the two counts teed up an all-but-certain Senate acquittal, should House Democrats forward the charges to the GOP-controlled chamber. They also fulfilled a promise made by some Democrats ever since Trump's inauguration to impeach him, even as polls have shown support for impeachment declining.

But, late Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, floated the possibility of a delay in passing a resolution to formally send the articles of impeachment to the Senate, where Republicans likely would present a strong defense of the president that could prove politically damaging for vulnerable Democrats.

"We’ll make a decision... as we go along." Pelosi told reporters, adding that "we'll see what the process will be on the Senate side."

"We have acted," Pelosi said. "Now, they'll understand what their responsibilities are, and we'll see what that is.”

In 1998, after the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the House sent the charges off to the Senate within minutes. This time around, the House may want to hold onto the articles as leverage to extract concessions from Senate Republicans -- or to bury impeachment as polls show it is increasingly unpopular among moderates in key battleground states.

Republicans and conservative commentators slammed any delay in the Senate trial as crass partisan gamesmanship, noting that just this past March, Pelosi had vowed that impeachment would need to be a bipartisan effort. In the end, the only bipartisan aspect of the impeachment process was that a handful of Democrats joined Republicans to oppose it.