Do you think LLVM IR covers this ground adequately, despite not being cross-platform?
My impression is that the GHC people, at least, still think that C-- is a nicer IR than LLVM-IR for their purposes. But they are slowly moving more things to LLVM anyway, because the LLVM project as a project has, in the meantime, built up a lot more momentum and infrastructure. In the early 2000s this wasn't obvious, but in 2013 it's clear that LLVM has an ecosystem, institutional support, resources to maintain ports, etc., while C-- didn't manage to get the same traction.