It is far from certain that every incremental change deemed by someone to be "socialist" actually is "socialist", let alone a bad idea. Thus, I myself don't automatically reject an idea just because someone throws the "socialist" label at it. But even if incremental changes proposed by more moderate Democrats do add up as a "path to socialism", the advantage of an incremental approach still holds true for reasons of transparency -- the details of incremental changes are more likely to be debated explicitly rather than buried in a sweeping package that is thousands of pages long and rammed through by purists before anyone is even allowed to read it, let alone debate it.