James Pethokoukis and Avik Roy both highlight what may have been Clinton’s least defensible economic assertion of the first debate: that the Bush tax cuts somehow set off the economic crisis of 2008. There’s no evidence to back up this argument, and no mainstream theory either. It exists pretty much exclusively in the rhetoric of Democratic politicians. Here’s Vice President Joe Biden in his 2012 debate with Paul Ryan:

[B]y the way, they talk about this Great Recession if it fell out of the sky, like, ‘Oh, my goodness, where did it come from?’” Biden said. “It came from this man voting to put two wars on a credit card, to at the same time put a prescription drug benefit on the credit card, a trillion-dollar tax cut for the very wealthy. I was there. I voted against them. I said, no, we can’t afford that.”

Leave aside the fact that Biden voted to authorize the war. The theory that the prescription-drug benefit led to the economic crisis is an original contribution of Joe Biden to economics. But the argument as a whole is the same one Clinton made, and it’s ridiculous.