Kane's rebuttal is pretty standard fare these days. He claims Media Matters only dissects his work because we're holding some sort of personal grudge against him. (I must have missed that MMA memo.) And then Kane fails to address a key criticism we made of his work. It's a pretty goofy dance, but it's the one Beltway journalists seem to prefer.

Quick primer. Two weeks ago I noted that in a piece about Democratic fundraising woes, Kane wrote in the very first paragraph that one of the reasons that coffers were less full this year was because Democrats were bashing big business, thereby scaring off wealthy donors.

Wrote Kane [emphasis added]:

Democratic political committees have seen a decline in their fundraising fortunes this year, a result of complacency among their rank-and-file donors and a de facto boycott by many of their wealthiest givers, who have been put off by the party's harsh rhetoric about big business.

Yikes! A “de facto boycott.” Yet Kane never backed up that claim in the article. In fact, later in the piece he softened the claim, suggesting, it had "become increasingly difficult to raise money on Wall Street." That, of course, isn't a “boycott,” which is how Kane opened his piece.

Yet in his lengthy response today during an online chat to a reader who raised the Media Matters critique, and who specifically asked about the WashPost's claim that anti-big business rhetoric from Dems had created a “boycott” among donors, Kane remained mum. He offered no evidence to support his claim that (alleged) anti-big business rhetoric was driving donors away. I suspect that's because Kane doesn't have any proof that there's a donor “boycott” in place.

Also, note the headline of Kane's Post piece announced Democrats were “Jarred by Drop In Fundraising.” Yet nowhere in the article did Kane quote a single Democrat who expressed being “jarred,” or anything remotely like that. In fact, some Democrats in the article suggested the fundraising dip was completely expected given the historic money heights the party reached in 2008.

Kane however, failed to address that point in his rebuttal as well.

UPDATED: Kane claimed Media Matters tried to “to invent some form of conservative bias” in his reporting." Not true. In my critique, I merely pointed out the obvious weaknesses in his reporting. I didn't suggest “bias” had anything to do wtih the shortcomings.