McCain in California - stumbling towards broke

John McCain's lame fundraising has been reported on already; it seems clear that the former frontrunner may be the first top-tier candidate to quit the presidential race.

And his audience knows it. The San Jose Mercury Newsreports:

Sen. John McCain, whose campaign for president is imploding amid funding shortfalls and even more staff resignations, was asked a question Monday in true Silicon Valley fashion:

"Pretend we're your VCs that have given you some money," the moderator asked McCain at a Churchill Club forum at the Santa Clara Marriott. "We're asking, `What happened to Plan A' and," came the kicker, "what's Plan B?"

As befits a strong supporter of Bush's occupation of Iraq, he basically doesn't have a Plan B.

"I can out-campaign anybody."

Not without money or staff, he can't. And they're both going going gone.

Monday... seven staff members announced their resignations, including three top press officers...  The news came during the Churchill Club luncheon

Those are new resignations, following the two top aides who quit last week. They also note that the Monday lunch was a "forum", not a fundraising event, and that the room wasn't nearly full.

McCain did try some actual fundraising at a Los Angeles meeting, but

McCain faced many questions about his spending rate and about his support for President Bush's Iraq war strategy

Elsewhere in today's Merc:

Fundraising by leading Democratic presidential candidates continued surging in Silicon Valley over the spring, but Republicans stumbled, hinting that they are losing inroads made in the nation's tech center earlier this decade.

... the three Democratic front-runners, including John Edwards, have raised a combined $3.1 million from valley residents for the first half of 2007... In contrast, fundraising by the three leading GOP candidates for the same period totaled $1,026,001, more than half of that collected by former Massachusetts governor and onetime venture capitalist Mitt Romney.