As was pointed out to me, the first candidate to announce for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president is former Alaskan senator Mike Gravel, who announced his candidacy on April 17, 2006. Gravel served in the senate from 1969 to 1981 and was formerly the speaker of the Alaskan House of Representatives.
With a theme of “Let the People Decide” Gravel’s issues include eliminating the Electoral College and implementation of the “Fair Tax.” His overriding issue, though, is The National Initiative:
The National Initiative includes a constitutional amendment—the Democracy Amendment—and a federal statute—the Democracy Act—that brings the people into the operations of government as lawmakers. The people thereby become a new check in our system of Checks and Balances, not unlike adding a forth leg to an unstable three-legged table. Citizens will become lawmakers in every government jurisdiction of the United States in a partnership with their elected officials and legislators. Representative government remains unaltered except for this new partnership.
The 76-year old Gravel now lives in Virginia. So we do have a candidate in the race. What remains to be seen is whether he will gain any traction in the primaries.
UPDATE: Check here for more info.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Thank you Vivian, for pointing out that Senator Mike Gravel is indeed in the race. He filed and declared months ago, figuring there was no need to tip an exploratory toe in the water any more than, as a politician, he would be likely to hold his finger in the air to respond to issues based on how the political wind is blowing.
Mike is authentic, just as he had the backbone to stand alone in a successful filibuster to end the draft, and stood alone to read the Pentagon Papers into the National Record, Mike is not afraid to do what he believes is right for the people and the country…He is a populist after all, in the mode of both Howard Dean and Ralph Nader who both got their political traction with the slogan “the people have the power!” Unfortunately that slogan is mere rhetoric as long as people are content only marching in the streets.
Mike is convinced that if we the people are to truly “take back America”, there is no point unless we have in place a system to keep it from ever again falling into the hands of an unresponsive Congress beholden to corporatist lobbiests. Following the model of the Swiss, as did the turn of the century Populist and Progressive movements, Mike believes Americans need to empower themselves with the Constitutional right to ballot initiatives in every jurisdiction throughout the land. We are confronted with issues of increasing severity the likes of which have never been successfully addressed by our existing system in a timely manner. Are we going to have Universal health care? Are we going to change the tax code to make it simple and fair? Are we going to deal quickly with global warming? Are we ever going to win the war on poverty?
Polls show that time after time the will of the people is ignored on major issues. Our current system allows this to occur for two reasons, 1. because lobbiests have a seat at the table of power every legislative cycle and the people have to wait 2 or 4 or 6 years to vote, 2. because the effort of the minority party is to always make the majority party look bad because it can’t get anything done. When the citizens are enabled by the ballot initiative to make law of, by and for themselves, when the people work with the congress through referenda on a regular basis, and when the people have the codified process to withdraw their consent through the recall process, balance will be restored and the relationship between legislator and citizen will become more respectful and responsive. The only check and balance on Congressional ethics at this time is the self regulating capacity of those who govern us but who are subject to the desires of their campaign financiers.
Yes Mike is running a dark horse candidacy, all the more power to him. I believe he will emerge and citizens will liken that horse to Seabiscuit, returned to renew real hope and power to the people.
This was a great election for Democrats and for democracy, but we are far from being out of the woods. The eternal vigilance that is required to maintain our liberty itself requires power to act upon that vigilance. Before this election incumbents were reelected at a rate of 98%. There was a very keen question as to whether we still could vote the bums out…fortunately we did. But what is to prevent us from slipping back into lazy carelessness? The next time fascists get their hands directly on power they will move to consolidate it even more quickly than they did in this last 6 years.
I urge readers to visit http://www.vote.org , http://www.gravel08.us , and http://www.ni4d.us If you recognize, as Einstein did, that continuously trying to solve new problems with old methods will never work, then perhaps you’ll decide as Mike has that it is time for significant structural change in how we govern ourselves.
Thank you.
p.s. I love your Thomas Jefferson quote: “I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”