Yes, a rewrite or replacement is the software analogue of the debt metaphor.

Section 3 of the article elaborates more on the technical debt statement in the TL;DR, but the gist of the argument there is that for a lot of systems, the rewrite is not really an option. Pretending it is an option is a partial contributor to the attitudes that make the debt spiral (or so I argue).

Yes, sometimes a rewrite is possible but the success stories are uncommon and are far outnumbered by failures.