For US stores this is the vital fourth quarter, but it's just not happening, if empty premises are anything to go by, writes Orna Mulcahy
COI TROTTER is doing her bit to help Obama on his way - by talking him up at the till. The 25-year-old works in downtown Chicago at Anthropologie, a boho-chic store selling pricey clothes and home accessories. When I mention Obama over the purchase of some candlesticks, her face really does light up.
"I'm beside myself," she says. "This is truly a moment in time. Everyone who comes in here wants to talk about it. It is soooo exciting." We talk for ages about Obama, because there is no one else in the queue. The only drawback for Trotter's style of canvassing is that there are so few shoppers around these days.
It's a serious problem on Main Street, America. For retailers everywhere this is the all-important fourth quarter, a chance to make up for the dismal sales earlier in the year, but so far it's not happening - if Chicago's near-empty stores and yawning sales staff are anything to go by.
The Dow Jones can rebound all it likes but the mood here is pessimistic. A report earlier this week showed that consumer confidence is down to its lowest level in 41 years. The fact that the data was released on the eve of the anniversary of the Great Depression can't have helped. All in all, Tuesday can't come quickly enough. In Obama's home town they desperately want him to win, if only to save Christmas.
Along the city's Magnificent Mile of Michigan Avenue, the plate glass windows glitter in winter sunshine, but the window displays are curiously dowdy, as though he city's window dressers have had their hours slashed. Burberry - where cashmere scarves are discreetly marked down - has windows filled with sad-looking, withered autumn leaves. Even the windows at Ralph Lauren, normally stuffed with opulent things, are a bit on the sparse side. Inside the hushed, panelled shop where a pillow sham could set you back $750 (€582), there are far more staff than shoppers and the famous cable knit cashmere blankets are down 30 per cent.
"Those are never normally discounted," whispers Marc Neuman, a sales assistant in a signature plaid bow tie. "It's very, very quiet. We're hoping things will pick up after Tuesday, but it's early for these kind of markdowns."
Elsewhere the sales staff are not so discreet. You only have to cross the threshold of Gap to be bellowed at: ladies outerwear is 30 per cent off today! There are offers everywhere and stealth sales too: even if something isn't marked down, just ask and the price tumbles.
At Neiman Marcus, the city's grandest department store, the marble-floored cosmetics hall is scarily empty. On the upside, the service is great but it takes three attempts to find a lipstick shade that is actually in stock.
"They're just not reordering things," says Shawn McLoughlin at the Sisley counter. "They're afraid that no one will buy." When it turns out that his grandmother was Irish, we settle in for a chat about foundation tints that quickly leads on to the economy. He worries that people expect Obama to work miracles when the country is $10 trillion in debt, and the average American owes $8,000 on credit cards. Then there are the out-of-control mortgages and the fact that people like McLoughlin's parents are seeing their pensions shot to pieces.
He thinks McCain's proposal to bail out bad mortgages is fundamentally wrong. Instead, he wants Obama to put a freeze on them for 12 months so people can work themselves out of trouble. "Obama can turn the ship around in the same way that Roosevelt did in 1932. It took him 13 years to make America great again. Obama can do that." The whole time we're talking, not one other customer appears.
At Tiffanys, cutbacks are in evidence too. While there are some customers milling around in the gifts section, the serious diamond department is deserted. With Chicago's law firms and financial houses laying off staff by the day, that situation is hardly going to improve.
Meanwhile, at Barneys, the famously expensive department store beloved of hedge fund wives, I am the only shopper in the Christmas department where the tree display has been cut back this year to a frankly depressing two models. It's hard to get into the Christmas spirit when all you can hear is your own breathing, and suddenly the expensive gifts - jewel-encrusted pigs, clever cigar cutters - look useless and tawdry. Sale assistant Beth Shaffer is drooping at the end of a long day doing not very much. Business is "extremely tough", she says. "People are just not spending, and the media is killing us."
Even the temple of teen shopping, Abercrombie & Fitch, is suffering. Its share price has plunged since the summer, as the credit crunch hits the size 00 brigade. The only customers here look like out-of-towners - middle-aged parents like me, groping around trying to differentiate one over-priced fleece from the next.
No point in asking the assistants here what they think about Obama. You couldn't hear a word over the obnoxious techno-beat music that's presumably at just the right pitch to make you pay full price and not bother asking for a discount.