O.K. so let's get the trivial missteps out of the way...
#1 Clinton camp accuses Barack Obama of some kind of dishonesty for writing in kindergarten that he wanted to be president.
Now this is just plain stupid. "kindergate" was monumental in it's sheer desperation. But wait, it gets better - or worse.
Now the Clinton campaign is saying that the attack was merely a joke.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/ 12/04/were-just-kidding/

"In rather head-spinning fashion, Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign is now saying that it was only joking when it noted on Sunday that one of her rivals, Barack Obama, wrote an essay in kindergarten titled, "I want to become president." The Clinton camp's reference to Mr. Obama's kindergarten musings has been widely mocked over the last 48 hours, and now her campaign is defending itself by arguing that it was all a joke.

Pardon me? When reporters traveling with Mrs. Clinton in Iowa on Sunday received the information about Barack-as-kindergartener, it was presented quite seriously. The press release disclosing the information made no mention that it was a joke, nor was it written in a tongue-in-cheek way. It referred to a perfectly serious Associated Press article in January.
The Clinton campaign sends out jokey press releases from time to time; reporters who cover her know when the campaign is kidding and when it is not.
Moreover, Clinton advisers on Sunday sounded deadly serious when they referred to the kindergarten essay - which was highlighted in an effort to hit back on Mr. Obama's statement that day that some of his opponents had wanted to be president for many years."

Sheesh. That is pathetic. And she says Edwards is a mudslinger?
ha-ha
#2
The Peru Free Trade Vote.
Now Obama is not entirely clear on this issue, it seems, but he has a learning curve that HRC does not. After all, her husband gave us NAFTA.
Now for all of us out here in middle class America, we don't need anyone to tell us that times are not as rosy as Wall Street says. I guess that information did not make it up to HRC's stratosphere. And there is ample evidence that a guy like Huckabee is going to run on an anti-free trade platform, and will be able to paint HRC as an elitist democrat who supports companies shipping jobs overseas. yikes!

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?p id=256831

"The Senate approved the Peru deal by a 77-18 majority, meaning that, in the words of Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, "Congress (has) passed another job-killing trade agreement that will shut down our factories, hurt our communities, and send more unsafe food into our kitchens and consumer products into our children's bedrooms."

But if the standard that is applied to senators seeking the presidency is that only their positions on close votes matter, then Clinton would have been wise to skip the fall 2002 vote on whether to permit President Bush to attack Iraq. Then, she could have played the issue different ways, depending on the crowd she was talking to - just as Clinton, and to an even greater extent Obama, cynically portray themselves as corporate critics when they are in front of labor and farm audiences and corporate allies when they are shaking down Wall Street donors.

The fact is that the votes senators choose to skip tell us just as much about them as do the votes they cast.

Clinton, Obama, Biden, Dodd and McCain all have track records on trade issues that have tended to place them on the side of multinational conglomerates and investors rather than workers and farmers in the United States and abroad.

They have all taken too many wrong stands in the clearest and most meaningful economic debate facing the country today. Notably, their positions on past trade tests - and their failure to recognize the significance of Tuesday's Peru vote -- put them at odds with key voters in battleground states such as Ohio, which the Democratic presidential nominee will almost certainly need to win in November, 2008."

#3 Now this is the most important, mostly because HRC's inability to admit an error is only as foolish as it is dangerous.

I am referring to the new NIE report that says that Iran has not had an active nuclear weapons program since 2003.
Listen to these quotes and see if you can tell which is
George Bush
and which is
Hillary Clinton

"In fact, having designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, we've actually seen some changes in their behavior.The Iranians were supplying weapons that killed Americans. They were supplying technical assistance from the Qods Force, which is their special operations element. So I think we've actually seen the positive effects of having labeled them a terrorist organization because it did change their behavior."

"To me, the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) provides an opportunity for us to rally the international community - to continue to rally the community - to pressure the Iranian regime to suspend its program," "What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program."

(the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are)  "proliferators of mass destruction,"  "The Revolutionary Guards are deeply involved in Iran's nuclear program."

I can't tell who is running for the democratic nomination and who is the warmonger in chief. Can you?
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignm atters?bid=45&pid=256838

That my friends is not just a slipping campaign, it is a desperate campaign, willing to say things that send us in the direction towards more war, rather than towards peace, all for the sake of a campaign.

All in all, the tragedy of Clinton's missteps is not the sad attempt at excusing an attack as a joke, but the truly poor decisions which betray the working and middle class citizens, and the refusal to change course, even when it threatens our nation and our world with war.