The problem is that we’re using tabs and spaces to format text for aesthetic reasons rather than treating them semantically - tabs are for indenting and aligning text, spaces are for separating keywords.
The simple solution is to redefine how tabs are interpreted by the text editor. Rather than saying that a tab character places the text that follows it at the next Nth column, we should say that a tab character is a delimiter between table cells in a manner more reminiscent of how they’re used in tab separated value (TSV) files. Seen in this light, we can see that space aligned files are analogous to the old fixed width data files, and we all know the advantages that delimited files have over those. For one thing, you can use sed or other tools to substitute strings in files and everything will still line up when you load them in the editor. Another advantage is that proportional fonts can now be used (in itself not a new idea - see Smalltalk, Oberon and Plan 9’s Acme).