The On Tap gang met for the first time on Election Night 2004. Cam brought Jim and I in to serve as analysts for his show’s Election Night coverage. We’ve been friends ever since.

On November 7, we’ll be doing the sequel — Election Night coverage on Cam’s show. (Cam, what time do we go on the air?)

So tune in on Election Night and get your fix from us. We’re much more interesting than those bums on network news.

Cam: We begin our coverage at 8 p.m. Eastern on NRAnews.com. At 9 p.m. Sirius Patriot 144 picks up our coverage, which will conclude at 1 a.m. Eastern.

Jim: Folks, you have a lot of good options for Election Night coverage, but I’m going to urge you to tune in to Cam, either over the web or via Sirius, whether or not you’re into gun stuff. Of course, if you’re into Second Amendment issues, you really have no excuse to not watch; nobody’s going to cover the races that matter to you the way Cam & Company will.

I’m not gonna completely self-promote; I’m going to instead promote Marshall’s knowledge, gut instincts, research, and horse sense. Imagine a Stuart Rothenberg free of Inside-the-Beltway thinking, or a Michael Barone with less tendency to evoke Mr. Spock from Star Trek, or John Zogby who didn’t suck. Or a Dan Rather who didn’t make #%& up.

In fact, I understand the RNC has a clear system for interpreting indicators for Election Day:

• Bad polls? Ignore.
• Bad headlines? To be expected.
• Cranky bloggers? No big deal.
• Candidate scandals? We can endure ‘em.
• Marshall Says We’re Gonna Have a Bad Year? PANIC!

I’m only half-joking; Marshall’s earlier bad vibes about this year were my only “Oh, ^$#@#, Republicans are going to get their asses handed to them” shudder so far this cycle.

On Election Night 2004, Marshall and I were the first to declare Bush the winner. And it wasn’t just guessing; we looked at Kerry under-performing Gore in blue states and said, “If he can’t do better than Gore here, he’s not going to do better than Bush in the red states he need to win.” Thus, early in the evening, we called every state correctly except Wisconsin, and that was probably only in Kerry’s column because of voter fraud in Milwaukee.

Seriously, Marshall’s plugged in in the political world, I’ve got the Hotline to Obi Wan, and Cam is the ringmaster of the whole circus. Honestly, for sheer fun and laughs to go with the early word and inside scoops, there is no place I’d rather be on Election Night.

Okay, other than watching the early returns in Monica Bellucci’s bedroom.