Ok the transformer and capacitor look good. I removed the ceramic socket from the pendant. Man, this thing is heavy duty! When I removed the socket by pulling it down and pushing the cable into the top of the pendant, a whole bunch of charred pieces of plastic fell out of the pendant. The wire nut connectors to the socket were charred. The wires obviously shorted out after the twist connectors disintegrated.
This pendant is five years old. It must be extremely hot at the top of the socket. The two short pigtail wires from the socket are fabric covered, probably some high temperature ceramic fiber. However, the wires from the cable don't look anything special. Their insulation is gone, just turned to powder. I wonder if I need some special hi-temp wire nuts or the normal kind will be OK. In either event I should probably rewire these every couple of years since the insulation on the cable is bound to deteriorate again.