That route requires a 2/3 majority in each house of Congress. Removal by impeachment is easier because it only requires a simple majority in the House.
The realistic way to remove Trump from office requires:
a. Biden wins enough states to gain an electoral college majority.
b. Pence declares Biden the victor, before a joint session of Congress, on Janaury 6, 2021 – probably in the face of his boss insisting that their ticket was the legitimate winner.
So, if any Democrat here might possibly meet Mike Pence at a restaurant between now and then, please be polite!
I don’t think Trump ever has a multi-step plan. I think he just has a habit of grabbing for whatever power is within arm’s length and using it to bully, intimidate, and disrupt.
Put another way, I think he’d invoke the Insurrection Act without really having a clear vision of how it would help him win election.
The real danger is that Trump is surrounded by capable Republican ghouls who have surely gamed out every underhanded election-stealing scenario that would help them keep their jobs. I myself can’t see that the executive has many viable options there, but I’m sure Bob Barr and Mitch McConnell are actively looking for any loopholes they can find.
Even if the general election is quashed / delayed won’t the state legislatures just chose their own slate of electors for the Electoral college vote? Sort of how it was originally envisioned if not implemented?
All his life Trump has gotten what he wanted by simply being astonishingly meaner and louder than anyone normally is. If you start out with a lot of money as well, you can go really far just by making people scared of you. He doesn’t have tricks up his sleeve. He flails and hits things. He also is clearly is doing what he is told, by Putin and I am sure some others.
It’s not just an issue of numbers. There’s also the willingness to cast a vote.
I feel a lot of Republicans who were unwilling to vote to remove Trump from office if it meant admitting he had committed crimes might be willing to vote to remove him from office if it was on medical grounds. The latter doesn’t impugn the reputation of the party.
I don’t think it was about being meaner and louder. It was always about being richer. Trump made sure that he was always surrounded by people who worked for him so they had to agree with whatever he was saying. This allowed him to be mean and loud and dishonest and racist and sexist; he could say anything with no consequences. He’s a seventy-three year old man who never had to learn any social skills.
But now he’s put himself into an arena - politics - where other people are under no obligation to agree with him. Trump must be insanely frustrated because every day he’s facing something he’s never had to deal with; people disagreeing with him. All his life he’s been used to people groveling to him because he was powerful. It must confuse the hell out of him that he’s now more powerful than he ever was before - but people have stop groveling. As far as Trump’s concerned, he’s the same as he’s always been and it’s everyone else who has changed.