Anyone who regularly reads Daily Gotham knows we don't like Vito Lopez, the head of the shady Democratic Party Machine in Brooklyn. That dislike has grown since Vito and his buddy, Dominic Recchia, endorsed a homophobic, grossly unqualified man (who has never even practiced law) for a judicial seat.

I am not going to revisit the many, many reasons Vito Lopez and his machine are distasteful embarrassments to those of us who like our Democrats to be better than the average corrupt Republican.

Instead I want to discuss a question I get asked by some Vito Lopez apologists: If not Vito, then who?

This question has a history. When considering how distasteful Vito is, one must realize that the party boss he replaced was Clarence Norman, a man whose corruption landed him in jail. Vito apologists like to point out that having a party boss who has yet to be indicted is better than what we used to have. In other words, one argument for Vito is that one of the alternatives is a return to those who were part of Clarence Norman's version of the machine.