Your "team sports" caricature isn't completely inaccurate, if only because my perception of D-vs-R is that of two ants contending furiously over a postage stamp, while a whole continent of political possibility languishes unnoticed. Sure, if we look close enough, there's probably a difference between one SecEd and another. She'll open a few more charter schools, so a few hundred kids will get a slightly better education and a few dozen teachers will be replaced by their essentially indistinguishable equivalents. That's probably an improvement, on balance, but not one to celebrate in the context of all the rest of the crap that rolls downhill from our rulers.