It can in fact make predictions in a number of circumstances. The most common case is FDO (https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/AutoFDO) - with FDO coverage GCC can easily demonstrate a particular vcall is ~always a particular type and emit exactly the code you describe. (To be clear, this isn't just in theory, but is actually happening in a wide variety of binaries I use.)

This is perhaps not fully "ahead of time", granted, but it's extremely easy to deploy and highly effective, and entirely accessible to C++.

Snark not warranted, profile guidance is a thing. But more likely many of those virtual functions will not be a virtual function in idiomatic C++ for performance oriented design. I have seen that I can get away with compile time polymorphism many a time. For the rest there is compiler devirtualization and profiles.