The reason pundits like the contested convention thing is that it plays to their vanities: what if the smart people made a meritocratic decision about who’s best?
This is driven, in part, by being mostly isolated from negative reactions to their opinions over the years.
And this isn't even fully that. It's just "it's not Harris."
I'd have a lot more respect for "Pritzker would be up by 10 points" speculation than this half-assed "these two are bad, nominate the good one."