Propelled into the 2020 limelight by the gonzo campaign tactics of his youthful campaign staff — the “Gravel teens” — eighty-nine-year old Mike Gravel has pioneered a new, irreverent, and extremely online kind of presidential campaign. But the issues he’s running on are deadly serious: opposition to US imperialism, drastic action to address climate change, and a radical revamping of American democracy. As a maverick senator from Alaska in the 1970s, Gravel made history by entering the top-secret Pentagon Papers into the public record. Now, he’s fighting to make his way onto a 2020 Democratic debate stage.

In this interview with Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic, Gravel talks about his admiration for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, his contempt for Vietnam-era warmongers in the Senate, and his big idea for an overhaul of the country’s broken political system: a “Legislature of the People.”