Cobb was born on December 24, 1962, in San Leon, Texas. After working as a crewman on a Gulf Coast shrimp boat, a construction worker and a waiter, Cobb graduated from the University of Houston Law School in 1993. After several years in private practice as a Houston, Texas, attorney, he became engaged in politics. During the 1980s, he campaigned for the Democratic presidential candidacies of Jesse Jackson and Jerry Brown. Those experiences left him disenchanted with and disaffected from the Democratic Party. Consequently, he turned his activism to broad issues of democracy and corporations, joining with citizens' groups in lectures, seminars, and workshops throughout the U.S. He sought to promote his view that corporations became unelected governing institutions, which should be overthrown by means of a nonviolent democratic revolution.