Kitchen Large Electric Appliances - GE electric dryer: apparent "burnout" where power chord attaches to machine.

My dryer completely died, so I unplugged it and took off the little panel on the back right above where the power chord goes into the machine. There's a rectangular bracket with 3 screws (posts) coming out of it. The power chord branches into 3 wires, one attached to each post. There are also 3 small wires coming from somewhere inside the machine, one going to each post. The posts are labelled from left to right "L2, Ground, and L1." The L1 post is broken off of the bracket. The wire from the power chord and the ring from the smaller wire (the one coming from inside the machine) are both still attached to the post. The little red wire from in the machine is broken off the ring that attached it to the post and the rubber casing is black near the broken end as though the wire had been burned.

Inside the hole where the post should be is a donut shaped piece of rubber or plastic with a lot of either ash or corrosion. Then there's a piece of metal filling in the hole of the donut. And the dust on the bracket above the hole is brown as though it had been burned.

If anyone can tell me what happened and how to fix it I'd appreciate it. I bought the machine used and assume it's pretty old, so if this is a fire hazzard and should be replaced it's not the end of the world. But this is the 1st problem I've had with the machine and I'd hate to toss it if it's just a matter of replacing a screw or a fuse.