Popular sentiment may tie the GOP and the infamous Koch brothers to unregulated campaign financing – while Democrats rail against it – but the post-Citizens United world can't be understood within the framework of party politics. Citizens United isn't good for one party and bad for another; it's good for rich people and bad for everyone else.

The Koch brothers' place in American politics as the big-spending bogeymen changing electoral outcomes with gobs of cash will find some help this week with the release of the documentary Citizen Koch and the book Big Money (by Politico reporter Ken Vogel), a good portion of which narrates the battle between the Koch brothers and Karl Rove for the soul of the Republican Party, such as it is.

There is a delicious irony in the the fracturing of the GOP coalition: it was made possible by the death of meaningful campaign finance reform – an agenda that Republicans have fought with increasing vehemence as the party morphed into the most reliable ally of big business. Conservatives may have celebrated the Citizens United decision that unleashed the torrent of unregulated outside spending, but they wouldn't be facing a possible Democratic upset in the Mississippi Senate race without it.

Democrats, meanwhile, have been mostly gleeful about that ongoing GOP civil war, and Citizen Koch in particular cements the notion that the brothers are responsible for the drift of the GOP rightward on all fronts (and the mortal enemies of all Democrats). And it's true that the Kochs have no real counterpart on the left (or at least they didn't in 2012). But the singularity of their influence is not a permanent condition – liberal dark money outpaced conservative spending in 2013 – nor really the point.

Big money is big money, and the distinction between right and left, or Democrat and Republican, will matter less and less as billionaires become the only real voters in the democratic process. In that sense, unregulated campaign spending is bad for both Republicans and Democrats, because it likely means the end of the two-party system in general.

The Kochs don't represent the threat of lasting Republican party rule as much as they are a harbinger of a political system grounded exclusively in billionaires' caprice. After all, the Kochs came to be GOP donors out of strategy rather than ideological affinity, in a marriage of convenience mandated by the persistence of party labels. But what about those billionaires who proclaim themselves "non-partisan" and are so willing to fund any candidate who can check the appropriate box on a given issue (your Michael Bloombergs, your Tom Steyers, and even your your donor-collection funnels like the League of Conservation Voters)?

Progressives might initially cheer such a turn of events, because those emerging king-makers happen to agree with them. But if choices about which candidates make it on the ballot become a function of who wins the billionaire issues auction, we enter into the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Era of American politics ... or more accurately put, the "Someone-Else-Chooses-Your-Adventure" Era, where the party letter after your name becomes less important than the list of single-issue backers.

You could well wind up with races between one candidate who draws money from, say, the pro-choice Emily's List, the National Rifle Association, the aformentioned Steyer and his climate change push or the Human Rights Campaign's efforts on same-sex marriage equality ... and another backed by the National Organization for Marriage, Sheldon Adelson and Bloomberg.

Voters might prefer that approach on a certain level: enthusiasm for party identification is at an all-time low, and real human beings aren't tied to party-based ideological coherence. But dark money means that no one would or could know that the sheen of independence so attractive to swing voters came from having been bought by the highest bidders on any given issue.

What's more, the cacophony of such ideological mash-ups might obscure a disturbing trend toward shadowy common ground among some Democrats and Republicans: a lack of regard for the working class and working poor, and avoidance, if not demonization, of progressive fiscal policies.

Already, the Congressional agendas of both Democrats and Republicans are often shaped by business, not citizens. A recent study found that the steady movement toward deregulation, embraced by both parties, "is a policy that is much more popular with business-world and affluent Americans than it is with the middle class", and "lower income groups seem to be ignored by elected officials".

The party system, for all its many flaws, assured that policies that supported the working class had at least nominal advocates among Democratic candidates and a place in Democratic platforms. They used to have them in the Republican party, too – and such policies could have Republican advocates again, if the system were to change in a way that allows everyday constituents to have an influence.

Optimists point to a Constitutional amendment proposed by Democractic Senators Tom Udall of New Mexico and Michael Bennet of Colorado: as Citizen United was decided on Constitutional grounds, only a change to the Constitution would allow lawmakers to even begin to rein in the flood of outside spending. (According to the Center for Responsive Politics, this year's midterms have already seen $106m from outside groups – or three times what was spent by this point in 2010.)

Pessimists also point to the Constitutional amendment proposed by Udall and Bennet. It is a high hurdle to clear.

If the political system continues down its current path and becomes the exclusive playground of the very rich, subject to their idiosyncrasies and whims, the working class will have to rely on billionaires who decide that their new pet causes are income inequality and the like in order to get any representation ... and even then, it will be representation as a favor, not a mandate.

