The author draws a conclusion about CSS in general from an argument that hinges entirely on the use of floats to emulate table-based layout. Ergo, he's criticizing floats for not being tables.
I don't understand what you're disagreeing with.
> Floats are simple the closest thing we can practically use
Furthermore, I did not define the "available subset" as floats. I'm saying that floats are the best available tool in that available subset for implementing table-like behavior. And yeah, they suck for that purpose, but _there is no better alternative_.
If you still don't understand that, then I'm afraid there's no use in continuing this discussion.