OP asked how you would explain politics to a noob and he didn't tag it with a 'serious' marker. My answer was largely in jest, and had nothing to do with ELI5, at least that wasn't at all its intent. You got really worked up over nothing.

I hate to tell you, unless you are the top 1% (and really I mean the top 1% of the 1%) you are, in fact, marginalized and powerless in terms of affecting serious change. You can vote to feel like you're part of the process, hell, I do, but in reality shit isn't going to any different whether you vote or not. The best you can hope for is to rile some attention via a social media campaign that may or may not take off. And despite the positions of each party on their platforms, this comes to a shock to most people, the parties aren't all that different. Both parties hide behind buzzwords and hot button issues (most social) while pushing through massive amounts of legislation that flies under the media radar, plus there's the whole checks and balances system so even if Bernie made it to Pennsylvania Ave (which he won't) things wouldn't be shaken up all that much.

As for the infantilization of voters, you know why that has happened? Because our political parties have become such poorly drawn caricatures they come across as parody acts. The left has to pander to the welfare state and SJWs, and the right has to bend over for the evangelicals and teetotalers. And no candidate believes in views that far to the right or left, yet they get up and there and spout fucking nonsense, whatever it takes to get that nomination. Sure the media is lazy, but so are voters. Less than half this country votes, and probably half if not more of those voters have absolutely no idea what their party supports beyond some general understanding of taxes, birth control and abortion, gun, and the death penalty. This year, loosely understanding immigration will be a 'thing'. I remember when Obama ran the first time and all these first time black voters ran to the polls. The lead up interviews were so astoundingly stupid one didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Multiple people believed Sarah Palin was his running mate when asked by interviews if they supported Obama/Palin 100%.

You are correct that there are not good teams and bad teams. It's interesting to note that I attributed negative qualities to both the mom and dad in my analogy but you went ahead and assigned bad to dad and good to mom. Here's a big surprise, neither party is good, and each are bad in their own way. If you really think either party cares more about individual people vs maintaining control, I feel bad for you sitting there waiting for your rainbow and pot of gold that is never coming. I answered the question the way I did, because to an outsider, this is exactly how our political circus appears.