At 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday night, President Barack Obama is giving this year's State of the Union speech to a join session of Congress.
(Watch live video of the president's address above. Click here for HuffPost's live blog coverage of the event.)
HuffPost's Jen Bendery relays background on the speech.
On the policy front, job creation and the economy will dominate the speech. Housing and college affordability will be central themes, again tied into the overall message of fairness, according to sources familiar with the speech. National security, as is always the case with the State of the Union, will also be a key component.
Expect Obama to break out issues that he and Congress can work on together; [White House press secretary Jay] Carney signaled Monday that those areas could include comprehensive immigration reform and tax reform. The president will also point to areas where he can take action without Congress, a practice the White House has said to get used to in the coming months given the partisan gridlock that has come to define Congress.
The president won't waste time selling his message once the speech is over. Less than 24 hours after the address, he'll kick off an intense, three-day tour of five states, all of which are key battleground states for his re-election: Iowa, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Michigan. The move is a convenient overlapping point for Obama to connect his governing to his campaigning, which has already gotten off the ground but isn't in full force yet.