Other than beating Donald Trump, probably the most central, repeated pledge of Joe Biden’s campaign was to “restore” or “heal the soul of the nation,” something he has promised to do since before he even joined the race right up to his victory speech a week ago.

No one knew what this meant, and reporters didn’t really bother to ask. Beyond reciting the line endlessly, Biden himself never went into it, other than to imply he wouldn’t compliment white supremacists in public.

Maybe that was because it was easy enough to guess: Trump had kicked off his campaign in 2015 by demonizing Mexican immigrants, and he had spent four years as president putting in place a smorgasbord of discriminatory immigration measures, including part of an idiotic and destructive border wall between the United States and Mexico. As the Washington Post put it, “Trump’s immigration policies speak louder than his racist, xenophobic words.” A President Biden would, presumably, not just avoid saying racist things in public — a surprisingly tall order for the candidate — but, at the very least, roll back these measures and shift the underlying thinking that had led to them.