I think for each case the plugin should simply display an error message before the tweet container.
Rate Limit Exceeded (code 88)
Optimally I'd like to identify if Twitter is rate limiting the requests and scale back the request rate linearly until the rate limit goes away. A simpler method would be to simply identify if you are being rate limited and just wait 15 minutes until the rate limit resets.
I think for each case the plugin should simply display an error message before the tweet container.