If Ickes is backing Dean...

...for chairman of the DNC, that means Dean is the choice of the Clintons, for whom Ickes is a principal political operative. Dean's job will be to wean his own activist followers in the late Democratic presidential process off of their sugar high and over to the "new look" Hillary. She is moving herself to the center right now, a shift that presidential candidates usually don't make until after they've been nominated. Securing the party activist base is essential to winning primaries. As DNC chairman, Dean would be expected to cover that flank, winking at his followers and the rest of the lunatic fringe in the party to reassure them that despite her centrist rhetoric it's still the same old Hillary.

The Clintons have an affinity for damaged goods like Dean. And if the people they surround themselves with aren't damaged when they are brought into the fold, they usually are by the time they leave.