Mystery of the Uberexcitable Pundits, Part 2: Why the ferocious conservative pack criticism of Hillary for an attack on Uber she didn’t make?  Ira Stoll notes,

“Advance press on the speech indicated she was going to criticize Uber, Airbnb, and other companies that rely on “on-demand” workers rather than stable unionized workforces.”

OK! But what advance press? Stoll tells me (via Facebook) he’s talking about this Michael Grunwald preview in Politico. Grunwald  wrote:

Clinton’s aide said she will discuss some of the structural forces conspiring against sustainable wage growth, such as globalization, automation, and even consumer-friendly “sharing economy” firms like Uber and Airbnb that are creating new relationships between management and labor.

OK! Grunwald’s preview proved accurate — Hillary did list the “sharing economy” as one of the trends contributing to inequality and wage stagnation. Also contributing to inequality are venerable solid-citizen firms that merely invest in computers or import goods from abroad. It’s a big leap for commentators to have assumed Hillary would be attacking Uber any more than she’d be attacking Ford or Boeing or UPS. So why did so many people make that mistaken leap? Who made it first. or drove the overexcited meme?  Candidates include: 1) Journalists, desperate for a hip anti-Hillary take; 2) panicked Silicon Valley types, or 3) the Jeb! campaign. …

My guess is #3. Journalists move in packs, but left to their own devices they don’t tend to mount synchronized mass assaults. …

Update: NYT reports that Hillary’s campaign gave Uber a heads-up before the speech, so I guess Uber itself (a subspecies of #2) is a suspect, if its PR team sensed a chance for some beneficial publicity. I still lean toward #3. …