In his report to the House Financial Services Committee, Ben Bernanke delivered bad news for Obama's reelection bid. Christian Science Monitor says:

The Fed chairman noted that US economic growth in the first half of 2011 was “modest.” The central bank predicts growth in inflation-adjusted economic output of 2.7 to 2.9 percent for 2011, and 3.3 to 3.7 percent in 2012. The latest forecast, completed in late June, is less optimistic than the Fed's April projection. Bernanke explained that some of his Fed colleagues “saw at least some part of the first-half slowdown as persisting for a while."

Given the expectation of modest economic growth, the Fed is projecting that the nation’s jobless rate will return to normal levels “albeit only slowly,” Bernanke said. The unemployment rate hit 9.2 percent in June, and the Fed expects it will end 2012 in the range of 7.8 percent to 8.2 percent.

This doesn't necessarily mean that President Obama is fucked. I think it's time to stow away James Carville's hackneyed old "It's the economy, stupid" saw. It's not always about the economy. When they created the Tea Party rebranding effort, Republicans made a terrible mistake that could very well hurt them in 2012: They turned the economy into a moral issue. Now, when they talk about the economy in terms of Constitutional values, they may as well be talking about abortion to some voters; their polarizing stance made the economy a dog-whistle issue. If President Obama can convince voters that we need to take care of our unemployed neighbors, even as we slowly put the economy back together, he can make the Republicans look like extremists who'll just make everything worse. He can run as the conservative candidate in red states and siphon off some support from the Republicans, who all look like fringe crazies who want to take away the fundamental American belief in helping your neighbors.