“I don’t think these concepts have worn very well,” Mr. Foner, once a student of Mr. Hofstadter’s, said. “Like anybody, Hofstadter was a product of a particular historical experience, and I don’t think he was putting forward a theory for all of American politics.”
Foner has his own reasons for putting Hofstadter down -- Foner's an old lefty with CP ties in the family who found Hofstadter too elitist and too contemptuous of populism. But he does have a point.
When somebody cites Hofstadter -- and only Hofstadter without qualifications -- to explain some current political phenomenon either they're lazy or they haven't kept up or they're looking more to attack and condemn rather than to understand. That comes through in the article you cited.
Hofstadter was very much a product of his time. With somebody dead that long, we can try to figure out why he thought as he did and what his era made of him, rather than take him for our hero or villain.
I know that was not how he wrote it, but that was the message that stuck.
We don't really know as youngsters that those professors and scholars have an entire world outside the text or class where they commune with each other, comparing progress toward agenda that are little understood by our formative minds.