"Gas was too cheap and consumers had too much money so their wallets couldn't fit in their pockets to go out into the polar vortex," was how one commenter on ZeroHedge snidely summarized The Versailles Villagers' official reaction to the unforeseen 11% collapse in retail sales over this past 4-day Thanksgiving holiday shopping period.
Not only did fewer people go shopping over the four-day period - 134 million, 5.2% less than 141 million last year - shoppers also spent an average of $380.95, down 6.4% from $407.02 a year earlier.
For the past decade or so, the failure of consumers over this holiday period to fulfill retailers' hopes and financial analysts' predictions, has been blamed on the shift to buying online. That clearly ended this year, and no one tried to use that particular excuse. Online sales accounted for 42% of total sales over the four-day period, the same percentage as last year. But, shoppers spent an average $159.55 online, down 10.2% from $177.67 last year.
Leading the The Versailles Villagers' team tasked with hiding this particular pig under a slather of lipstick, National Retail Federation's CEO Matt Shay turned reality on its head and argued that the sales declines were partly the result of an improving economy. Also, according to Shay, “people don’t feel the same psychological need to rush out and get the great deal that weekend, particularly if they expected to be more deals." And, he noted, there's also the fact that people can now "shop 24/7 online."
ThinkProgress regurgitated the story that the problem was that retailers opening on Thanksgiving merely moved forward sales that would have occurred on Black Friday, without addressing the fact that total sales for the four day period declined.
With disastrous numbers like this, it's an open question how much longer Democratic Party leaders can avoid the truth that they got pounded by voters because the economy sux for working Americans.
--Statistics and quotes from ZeroHedge story, Retail Disaster: Holiday Sales Crater by 11%, Online Spend Declines: NRF Blames Shopping Fiasco On "Stronger Economy"