being an “optimally weighted” (whatever that means) multi variable utilitarian optimum, with every voter and every candidate placed on a multidimensional continuum for every individual issue. It makes sense that this isn’t a practical metric to use though.

It is a practical metric because not only it reflect what actually exists in real life (voters are making multi-attribute judgements under uncertainty and risk), but the voters are doing that difficult work for us.

A ballot encodes all the tradeoffs and relevant pairwise preference strengths being made by a voter. After a voter settles on a ballot, given outside information, it is expressing as much information as you could possibly extract from them about their judgements.

This also something that can be made empirically very formal. The cardinal ballot represents a distribution of preferences and tradeoffs. A ranked ballot represents a single random sample from that distribution.

If condorcet is a standard to compare to agreed on generally by researchers then why not simply use that method?

A Condorcet winner can be explicitly a mediocre or great winner. For example:

40% A=10 B=9 C=0 (A>B>C)
35% A=0 B=9 C=10 (C>B>A)
25% A=6 B=10 C=0 (B>A>C)

Scores: A=5.5 B=9.25 C=3.5
B>A: 60%, B>C: 65%. B is the Condorcet winner by nice margins. From the scores, we know it is a great one.

40% A=10 B=1 C=0 (A>B>C)
35% A=0 B=1 C=10 (C>B>A)
25% A=1 B=10 C=0 (B>A>C)

Scores: A=4.25 B=3.25 C=3.5
Rankings haven't changed. B is still Condorcet winner by the same margins. But from the scores, we know it is a mediocre one. You're better off going with A here, because those 25% of people tolerate A more than C.

The bottom line is that majority rule is a rule of thumb, not a principle.