@ShaneD tried your workaround on iPad (turning off screen auto-lock), and then began moving about 75 offline notebooks one by one to not be offline. On at least half, if not more, when moving the slider to "offline off" it reverts back to being online. I move slider to off, press "Clear", and the notebook slider automatically moves back to the right. This is true in just about every case where the forever-long download is in some form of progress.
Do you have any idea when this issue will be resolved? It's made the iOS versions of Evernote, which people are paying for, completely useless for close to two months now.