If Pence is DS, and congress/senate is majority DS, then why the theatrics now? Why not vote for removal when Trump was impeached? Pence takes over and rides out the remainder of the term, repubs nominate him as the candidate for 2020 and suddenly the Dem path to victory is much easier and nobody is the wiser. Heck, there's probably not even any cheating required. Pence would fold like a bedsheet over covid and that would serve to further demoralize the republican base and make a takeover that much easier.

So why the extra year of ultimately pointless theatrics? What's the actual purpose behind it? So far, I've only come up with 2 answers:

1. Trump is still playing some sort of long-game which is about to end in a huge reveal, Ocean's 11 style. (looking less likely by the hour)

2. Trump is in on the whole thing and the point is to get everyone riled up so they can weed out the "inconvenient" people who would make trouble in their so called "great reset".

Maybe I'm way off-base and somebody else here can come up with another angle but I've been mulling this for weeks and haven't come up with anything better.