Last week, the Democratic National Committee sent out a 16-question, “time sensitive” survey to party members and a plea for money to help defeat the Republicans in the 2008 presidential race.

No references are made with either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, only to a generic “Democratic presidential nominee.” The 15th question offers four lines of blank space to allow respondents to write in “one piece of advice” to that nominee. Mainly, the survey takes the temperature of the party faithful by measuring such things as volunteerism (making phone calls, going door-to-door, etc.) and the level of rank-in-file optimism that a Democrat will win the White House in November.

But to give you an idea how nasty the campaign is expected to be, here’s one of the multiple-choice questions: “How likely do you think it is that John McCain and his Republican allies will launch a ‘Swift Boat’ style smear campaign against our presidential nominee?”

The choices are: Very likely, Somewhat likely or Not Likely.

A cover letter from Howard Dean, DNC chairman also gives some insight as to what to expect.

“The bottom line is, we can’t leave our candidate for the White House twisting in the wind while the GOP slings mud and does a hatchet job on our Party,” Dean write. “We need to stay on the offensive, run an aggressive campaign and keep the Republicans on their heels every step of the way.”