The article has nothing to do with either populism in the late 19th century or Hofstadter's interpretation.
The problem discussed in the article is not status anxiety but anxiety about how to pay medical bills -- the bills that insurance companies don't pick up unless patients are determined to suffer from clearly labeled illnesses other than mental illnesses: "Because of the stigma of mental illness as well as the lack of cures for other diseases like fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue, they say, there is a constellation of forces pushing for such a diagnosis. Many companies often will not help mentally ill employees or those with poorly understood disorders like fibromyalgia; worse, insurance companies still don't want to pay for long-term psychiatric care. As a result, they say, there is now a movement to treat other illnesses -- including chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia -- as Lyme disease and to attack doctors when they don't" (David Grann, "Stalking Dr. Steere," New York Times 17 June 2001, Section 6; P. 52).
Populism in the subject line is just a loose label for the rhetoric that pits "established experts" against "lay persons" & "maverick experts" & finds the former's findings to be automatically suspect. The rhetoric has ill served the patients in the article.
Yoshie