12.01am GMT

Good evening and welcome to our live blog coverage of the 2013 state of the union address, the all-you-can-eat buffet of presidential speeches.

This is no gauzy inaugural address, no giddy election-night victory speech, no somber statement on an unnatural disaster, no playful turn on a talk show or at a tuxedo dinner. This is a policy pig-out, a night for the president to gather all of Congress around and berate, badger and beg them to act on issues he asserts as vital to the national interest. The president picks the issues, he assigns them priority and nobody can interrupt except to clap or be a jackass.

There's an unusually tantalizing element to tonight's speech in that President Barack Obama may deliver a proper scolding to Republicans for what Democrats portray as obstructionist tactics in the face of the popular will. Obama has just become the first president since Eisenhower to win a majority of the popular vote twice, and the first Democrat to do so since FDR. Polls show a majority of the country is with him and against the GOP, which has now achieved 55% disapproval.

Obama all but ignored Republicans in his inaugural address. In tonight's speech, the president will “throw down the gauntlet" to Congress and demand they take "common sense" action, an anonymous White House official has told reporters. The president is apparently even cussing in meetings. Will this "new Obama" be on view tonight?

The White House has let relatively little drop in terms of what will be in the speech, but one major line has come out: the president will announce that he is bringing 34,000 US troops home from Afghanistan – about half the current force – within a year, on the way to a complete pullout by the end of 2014. It’s to be seen how Obama will argue that key regions have been secured, that the Taliban have been fatally crippled or that Afghan security forces are ready to take over. In any case the president has a remarkable breadth of foreign policy ground to cover, from North Korea's nuclear test, to Syria's war, to renewed violence in Iraq, to relations with China and Russia, to Iran's nuclear program, to Israel/Palestine, to Mali, to Somalia. If the president does not return to last year's attack in Benghazi, Libya, rest assured that Senator Marco Rubio will, in his rebuttal for the Republican side.

The White House has been eager to talk about the fact that Obama will talk about the economy. With the unemployment rate still above 8%, jobs and economic growth are still the issues people care about most. In a recent Quinnipiac poll, 35% of respondents rated the economy as the topic they would most like the president to address, followed by the budget deficit (20%), gun policy (15%) and health care (12%). In his discussion of the economy, the president will lay out four areas of focus, officials say: manufacturing, infrastructure, clean energy and education.

Immigration issues barely rated in the Quinnipiac poll (4%), but with bipartisan support building for a new immigration law, Obama is sure to expend considerable rhetorical effort on the topic. Gun control has arrived at a similar, sudden moment of possible legislative action after perennial debate. Tonight’s guest list includes a full complement of invitees to put a face on immigration and gun policy.

Republicans have telegraphed one line of attack on the president's speech, accusing him of emphasizing pet issues and losing focus on the economy. The White House was at pains Monday to rebut the assertion. "You've seen the president act aggressively on comprehensive immigration reform," White House press secretary Jay Carney said. "You've seen the president put forward a series of comprehensive proposals to reduce gun violence in this country in the recent weeks.

“These are important priorities of the president and of the nation. But what remains his number one priority is what it has been since he took office, which is to get this economy growing, get it creating jobs, strengthening the middle class and expanding the middle class — allowing those who seek and aspire to the middle class to get there, giving them the tools to do that."