It depends. If you drink 2-3 pours of regular (nonflavored) Vodka every night with nothing but ice and maybe club soda, that's about 98 calories per standard shot, which are purely empty calories.
And it's going to affect your metabolism, causing your liver to create more cholesterol and fat, and making it more difficult access stored fat to burn as energy.
Maybe to your more general point, no, you don't need to abstain completely from alcohol to bolster weight loss in combination with exercise and healthier food consumption. And, yes, some alcohols are better than others in terms of sugar and other carbs that further tax your liver and go straight to your love handles. But as you get older, drinking "good" alcohol even in moderation makes shedding pounds much more challenging.
So I stand by my proposition that cutting alcohol (including straight unflavored vodka) is a game changer. And personally, I don't do that on a regular basis (football season? forget it). But when I abstain completely for some significant amount of time (e.g. Dry January) and don't change anything else about my diet and exercise, I can more easily and visually cut off some excess pounds.