The issue is that they're both flawed solutions and you should pick the solution that's the least worst depending on what you're trying to do. Sometimes that's tables, sometimes that's CSS, sometimes it's some combination of the two. They both have advantages and disadvantages.
Saying "CSS dropped the ball, and that CSS failed to incorporate tools for describing layouts in table-based ways" is an incredibly oversimplified summary. Back in 1996, CSS1 was published and while the styling was incredibly well-thought-out, the layout part of it was somewhat tacked on (somewhat to its detriment), with the aim that CSS2 would tackle the complex layout issues that needed to be addressed. CSS2 was introduced in 1998, except no-one implemented much of it for years, most notably display:table which gets the most of the advantages of using CSS and tables within CSS. Sometime around 2002 or so (after the death of Netscape) someone realised you could hack around with 'float' property (introduced in CSS1 and well-supported) to achieve column-like layouts.
Once IE6 and IE7 dies we can finally switch to display: table. I'll give an optimistic estimate of this happening in 2013, but it really depends on how long XP/Vista last.
Saying "CSS dropped the ball, and that CSS failed to incorporate tools for describing layouts in table-based ways" is an incredibly oversimplified summary. Back in 1996, CSS1 was published and while the styling was incredibly well-thought-out, the layout part of it was somewhat tacked on (somewhat to its detriment), with the aim that CSS2 would tackle the complex layout issues that needed to be addressed. CSS2 was introduced in 1998, except no-one implemented much of it for years, most notably display:table which gets the most of the advantages of using CSS and tables within CSS. Sometime around 2002 or so (after the death of Netscape) someone realised you could hack around with 'float' property (introduced in CSS1 and well-supported) to achieve column-like layouts.
Once IE6 and IE7 dies we can finally switch to display: table. I'll give an optimistic estimate of this happening in 2013, but it really depends on how long XP/Vista last.