Or you remove all pretense he has and his support either evaporates or is forced to publicly renounce democracy.
As you said
It’s not like Maduro is going to give up power either way.
So what does that matter? “Oh, he has no support now though!” So? People like you will still be wringing your hands and crying “B-b-but what if there’s a civil war??? We can’t provoke him! Living in a fascist state is better than that, because it’s MY kind of fascist, and fuck what the Venezuelan people think!”
But I bet you don’t really care about that, you’ve already got a preference for which nation leads the invasion, huh?
Yeah, Brazil. But I guess that’s not as convenient a boogeyman as the US for justifying your favored fascists.
The US has enough foreign affairs to be handling at the moment. If there is going to be outside intervention, the Venezuelan people must take up arms in defense of their own rights first; and then that outside support should come from the region, not from a distant superpower.