That is only a theory, with no astronomy observations to support it before the Cosmologic Background Radiation, which is open to a lot of interpretation, itself.
No, the CMB is not open to interpretation. There are no other 'models' that can explain it. Lerner certainly can't. The article was totally on point. This is a self-publicist, armed with a BSc, who believes in scientific impossibilities, (black holes are plasmoids! AGNs are plasmoids! EM forces can move charge neutral stars around!) being publicised by an organisation who are hosting a forthcoming debate between him and a real physicist. Where he will get torn to pieces, hopefully. He is also always on the lookout for funding for his own company.
None of the stuff he mentions says a single thing about the BBT. It might say something about galaxy evolution theories. I have seen his 'work'. It is sloppy, his analysis is horribly flawed (because he doesn't know how to do it), and he is a believer in tired light! His latest equation for which, BTW, is an absolute joke, and is unphysical, and fails spectacularly. I have interacted with him on physics forums and more recently on youtube comments sections.
So, any other 'model' that attempts to replace the BBT/ LCDM, will have to explain everything it does, and more. Lerner can explain precisely nothing. All the other people who desperately clung on to SS models are mostly dead. They were, however, respected scientists, for the most part - Hoyle, the Burbidges, Narlikar (still alive). Lerner is not even close to that company, and is therefore rightly dismissed in the article as a pseudoscience believer. That is what (his version) of plasma cosmology is - pseudoscience.
He cannot explain the observations that strongly support dark matter, such as colliding cluster lensing observations. He cannot explain the observations that strongly support an accelerated expansion of the universe, or dark energy, if you prefer. Such as the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect on the CMB photons, the baryon acoustic oscillation observations, and the supernova 1a time dilation measurements. There is much else besides, including the observations of the cosmic web which, in simulations, only work with the currently estimated amount of DM. And much else besides.
He is using the typical crackpot tactic of claiming censorship of his 'work'. I saw the 'paper' he submitted to MNRAS. It was a joke. MNRAS have published him before (lord knows how that train-wreck of a paper got past peer-review!), so that doesn't really stack up. The 'paper' was not only flawed, invoking an impossible tired light linear equation, that is trivially shown to be impossible, but also poisoned the well by claiming that evidence for concordance cosmology wasn't all that strong, by referencing a 2000 paper by Mike Disney. Thereby ignoring WMAP and Planck results which spectacularly confirmed the standard model. If I was reviewing it, it would have gone straight back to the editor, with a note saying, "why did you send me this #*&^!"
'Big Bang didn't happen'? Not even close. As for Lerner - as the lead author of the 'Panic' paper, Leonardo Ferreira, said in a comment on Brian Keating's channel - "I think Lerner case is that he is not even wrong. He needs to get more things right to be even wrong." And, "All this controversy to me comes across as Lerner not doing his homework, and ignoring fundamental results."
As per usual with Lerner. Nothing to see here. Move along.