WASHINGTON — Just days after announcing he would not seek the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Sherrod Brown assailed Republicans for not standing up to President Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric, saying “they’ve followed” the president “like lemmings off the cliff.”

During an appearance Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Brown, D-Ohio, charged that today’s Republican Party has continued to move to the right, saying Trump "betrays workers and utters racist, anti-Semitic rhetoric and nobody in their party calls him out.”

Pointing out that commentators are focused on divisions inside the Democratic Party, Brown said Republicans “don’t have divisions. They’ve all followed his racist actions and betrayal of workers. They’ve followed it like lemmings off the cliff.”

Brown last week said he would skip the presidential race after he made separate trips to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, which will hold the early presidential contests next year.

Although there were reports Brown decided not to run because he could not raise the millions of dollars needed to wage an effective campaign against better-known contenders, he said he was satisfied that Democratic candidates such as Senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Kamala Harris of California already had adopted his message of appealing to middle-class workers.

Brown said his message, which he described as the “dignity of work” was “resonating and I would say mission accomplished, adding he could “drive that better from the Senate than I can as one out of 15 or 20 presidential candidates.”

Brown made clear he is not ready to endorse a Democratic candidate for president. But he predicted “the Democratic nominee is the one who talks to workers the best.”

“I’m not just talking about workers in the industrial Midwest,” Brown said. “I’m talking about the physical therapist in Nevada, the construction worker in New Hampshire, and the hospital worker in Baltimore.”

jtorry@dispatch.com

@jacktorry1